


i know all sorts of things i don't believe

by eneiryu



Series: the ruins of a softer world [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hunting Down Monroe, M/M, Multi, Post-Finale, Theo Puts His Espionage Skills to Work for the McCall Pack, Theo Raeken-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 00:01:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 80,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16294481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eneiryu/pseuds/eneiryu
Summary: So, anyway. That’s how Theo becomes pack-mom to Scott’s merry band of supernatural misfits.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here, have 80,000 words of how I envision Theo helping the McCall pack hunt down Monroe and come to terms with himself while he does it.
> 
> This story assumes that conversations similar to those had in my previous story nine mistakes were had. Minus, er. That last one with Liam. If it feels like a chapter is missing at the beginning, it might help to read that.
> 
> Title take from [this](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=392) asofterworld comic as a placeholder and kept because it fit.
> 
> The very generous auqarellin has started a Russian translation on ficbook.net: [i know all sorts of things i don't believe](https://ficbook.net/readfic/7478209).
> 
> (Edit: Ran through and fixed a few typos, as well as changing "Dr. Dunbar" to "Dr. Geyer," since apparently my real-life inability to remember people's names extends to fic, as well. 
> 
> Also, throwing this out there--if y'all have prompts for this universe, hit me up. I'm having way too much fun writing in it.)

By unspoken agreement, the McCall pack—and Theo, who becomes sort of permanently pack-adjacent after a series of unintentional, uncomfortable, and increasingly emotionally-fraught conversations with various pack members that culminate in Liam pitching Theo’s truck keys into the middle of the preserve and refusing to go find them until Theo swears he isn’t leaving _—_ spends the week after the showdown with Monroe tripping over each other at the McCall house.

The first night, everyone gets to the house and immediately and without a word collapses on whatever pieces of furniture are available and passes out for a solid fifteen hours. The next morning, Ms. McCall comes downstairs—Argent in tow, Theo notes with interest, though not a great deal of surprise—takes one look at the sprawling mass of mostly-supernatural creatures spread across her living room, and disappears with Argent and Derek’s credit card, which Derek hands over with a baffled expression but zero argument. She returns a few hours later with Argent’s hulking SUV stuffed to the brim with boxes packed with groceries, having apparently raided Beacon Hills’ Costco for the entirety of its stock in bagels, lunch meat, frozen burritos, and anything and everything else likely to keep a pack filled primarily with teenage boys fed. She’s also sprung for several air mattresses, which Theo discovers after he’s dragged into helping unload the car.

He and Liam end up splitting one, since the bedrooms are taken up by either their proper owners—Melissa and Argent in the master, Scott and Malia in Scott’s—or by Stiles, who claims the upstairs guest bedroom for himself, Lydia, and Derek by divine right of being an honorary McCall, Ms. McCall’s long-suffering eye-roll notwithstanding. Corey and Mason take a second air mattress into the mostly-unused dining room, Scott and Derek moving it’s previous occupant—a solid wooden table that nearly ends up through a wall due to Liam’s ill-conceived and quickly-disproven assurances that he could move it solo—to the side.

Liam unilaterally decides to set up his and Theo’s air mattress in the living room, the space between the coffee table and the TV barely big enough for it to fit. It turns the room into an amateur obstacle course since they’re too lazy to deflate it during the day, pack members stumbling over it as they grope their way towards the kitchen and coffee in the morning—Argent brewing massive pots of absolutely caustic dark roast that no one will admit to liking but everyone drinks religiously—or as they try to find free space to sit in the cramped room during _Harry Potter_ movie marathons and epic Mario Kart tournaments. More than once, Theo is rudely awakened by someone tripping over a corner of the mattress as they make their way to the couch, the living room having become the de facto gathering place of the pack.

“Sorry Theo,” Scott grimaces after one such encounter, sprawled half over Theo from where he’d fallen but his coffee miraculously unspilled.

Theo grunts out a non-answer, then another, slightly higher-pitched one as Scott levers himself upright and in doing so plants his hand directly on top of Theo’s liver. He gives silent thanks that Liam had woken up earlier to borrow Theo’s truck and run home, change, and feed his parents some story about why he’s camping out in the McCall’s living room; Liam isn’t exactly the most coordinated werewolf to ever grace the species and Scott’s headfirst tumble onto the air mattress probably would have had flailing—and clawed—consequences.

Scott thankfully manages to sit up without further incident. Once vertical, he leans forward to slide his mug onto the coffee table, then turns to grin at Theo, now-empty hand landing on his shoulder and giving it a companionable squeeze as Scott pushes himself to his feet. A few days ago the touch probably would have freaked Theo out, but several days into this giant pack slumber party it’s become normal, commonplace; Scott patting shoulders and squeezing forearms and ruffling hair like he could convince himself that his pack is whole and healthy through touch alone.

Theo, for his part, tries not to think too hard about the clench in his chest every time Scott casually, unthinkingly does it to him.

Now grudgingly awake, Theo rolls onto his back and scrubs his face with his hands, then leaves them there as he breathes, senses automatically stretching out to check the house as long years of brutally-learned habits kick in. He hears the groan of the cushions when Scott drops onto the couch, smells the slightly-musty burst of air it releases; the couch old and well-used and very nearly an honorary pack member itself, considering how many times its played host to wounded werewolves or been the centerpiece of some supernatural drama.

A few feet away from where Scott’s now taking large sips of his retrieved coffee, Lydia sits curled in the loveseat, the fan from the laptop in her lap whirring softly. She’s been up for a while, apparently, Theo’s nose tagging the dampness of her freshly-washed hair. Even with the sharp chemical tang, though, there’s no hiding the way that Lydia’s personal scent is slowly, steadily, starting to mix with those of Stiles and Derek. Theo wonders if she’s realized that, if Derek has said anything, then thinks it’s probably unnecessary; banshee intuition aside, Lydia’s human choices are always deliberate, their consequences always understood.

Thinking of Derek and Stiles focuses Theo’s senses for a moment, drives them up the stairs to the guest bedroom to where Derek is unsuccessfully trying to convince Stiles to get up, his voice low and fond and almost unbearably tender. Feeling like a voyeur, Theo quickly yanks his attention elsewhere, though not quickly enough to entirely avoid the conversation turning physical, the wet sound of Stiles interrupting Derek by pulling Derek’s mouth to his or Derek shifting his weight on the creaky box spring to cover Stiles’ body with his own.

Mentally shaking off the sudden heat that suffuses his body, forcibly ignoring the way that everything around him smells overwhelmingly of Liam, Theo recenters his attention and stretches his senses back out, this time deliberately searching for the rest of the pack. Malia is still fast asleep in Scott’s room, the half-wild coyote scent of her layered on top of Scott’s more grounded lupine one and starting to sink in. Down the hallway, Ms. McCall and Argent are just exiting her room, barefoot steps creaking on the hardwood floor as they start down the stairs. Theo tags the bitter scent of coffee on their breaths, hears the small _clacks_ of the empty mugs Argent is apparently carrying one-handed as they head past the living room to the kitchen. That leaves Corey and Mason, still buried under blankets on their air mattress in the dining room, their whispered conversation broken by occasional laughs and small touches.

Pack members located and their basic statuses ascertained, Theo finishes poking his senses into the remaining unchecked corners of the house and then, sweep coming up clean as it has every morning, lets his heightened awareness fall away until he’s hearing and smelling things more as a human than a chimera. In the easy quiet of the morning, his thoughts start to drift, his hands relaxing away from his face as everything around him—the warm smell of the house, the miscellaneous domestic sounds of people moving around with only normal, everyday worries to manage—radiates an irresistible comfort that Theo, who absentmindedly flicks through his memories to check, can’t ever recall experiencing before this strange, surreal week.

The sound of car doors slamming interrupts his syrupy thoughts, but before his muscles can start to coil or his instincts start to flare, he catches the familiar rhythm of Liam’s heartbeat just a few steps behind that of the Sheriff. Liam is rambling on about the upcoming lacrosse season, the Sheriff encouraging him onwards when he pauses with gentle hums and short questions. Theo tilts his head, curious at the underlying crinkles and crunches of paper packaging he can hear, then catches a whiff of the food inside; the Sheriff has brought breakfast from the diner in town, and apparently conscripted Liam in the driveway to help him carry it in.

Apparently hearing the same things and drawing the same conclusions, Scott sets his coffee down and hurries to the door to open it. The Sheriff gives him a grateful nod, ignores his offer to take the box of egg sandwiches and hash browns, and motions Liam to proceed him into the house. Liam goes, tossing a _hey guys_ over his shoulder as he beelines it for the kitchen, the Sheriff following at a more sedate pace.

Recognizing the signs of the house officially shifting to _awake_ , Theo slides over to the edge of the mattress and sits up just in time for Liam to reappear and lob a sausage, egg, and cheddar on an everything bagel at his head. Theo catches it effortlessly but makes sure to kick Liam’s ankle in retaliation when he steps into range. Liam attempts to dance out of the way but mostly just manages to nearly drop everything in his hands, then plops down next to the mattress, arms full of an additional sandwich, two paper sleeves of hash browns, and two cups of coffee sloshing precariously near the edges of their respective mugs.

“Give me those,” Theo sighs, managing to drop his sandwich and rescue the mugs before Liam can give Ms. McCall another reason to despair for her floors.

“Thanks,” Liam mumbles, food already dropped into the cradle of his crossed legs and mouth already stuffed with hash browns.

Theo grimaces in disgust at the visual but hands Liam back the mug filled with coffee the creamy color of toffee anyway, keeping the lightly sugared one for himself. He looks up as he takes a sip to see the Sheriff returning from the kitchen, boxes of breakfast food now traded for a mug. He’s very nearly plowed into by Stiles, stopped only by his own reflexes and Derek snagging Stiles’ arm at the last moment to pull him out of the way as they round the corner from the stairs.

“Pops!” Stiles greets loudly, clapping his hands on his dad’s shoulders, loose-limbed and satisfied in a way that definitely means that Derek got him off before they came downstairs. From the resigned expression on the Sheriff’s face, he realizes this in the same instant as the rest of the room, no supernatural senses required.

“Son,” He returns mildly, eyes peering over the rim off his mug to stare pointedly at Derek, who colors and mutters something about getting coffee.

Stiles watches him go with a dopey smile and then turns back to his father, who looks inordinately pleased with himself at having made Derek run away, “Any news from the other counties?”

The relaxed atmosphere in the room tightens somewhat as everyone zeros in on the Sheriff, waiting for his answer. Even Scott, returned from having ran upstairs to wake Malia up for breakfast, slows on his way to the kitchen to listen.

The Sheriff sighs and rubs a hand over his forehead, “Not so far. Wherever Monroe and the last of her hunters disappeared off to, they’re laying pretty low.”

“Nothing from my contacts, either,” Argent adds, appearing from the kitchen to greet the Sheriff in that hand-shaking, arm-clasping kind of way that some adult males seem to use instead of just hugging. Argent then turns so that he’s including the rest of the room when he continues, “I’ll have them keep looking.”

Everyone deflates a little, but since that update is virtually the same as it has been for the past week, no one is much surprised. Derek reappears from the kitchen and edges past the Sheriff to the loveseat, handing Lydia the sole yogurt parfait and a full coffee mug before he sits in front of the seat, close enough that Lydia’s thigh presses against his arm when she straightens her legs to start eating. Stiles beams at them and heads over, tripping over the coffee table but recovering with only a slight stumble until he can weasel himself into the loveseat next to Lydia, who glares at him but grudgingly makes room. Derek waits until he’s settled and then hands him off the last of the three mugs he’d brought out from the kitchen and one of the sandwiches.

Theo follows that whole sequence of events absently, his attention focused on the Sheriff; on watching the Sheriff watch his son. His expression is thoughtful, but not conflicted; curious, maybe. A little relieved. He seems to sense Theo’s gaze and turns to look at him, Theo jerking his head away and back down to his coffee a half-second too late.

Corey and Mason stagger their way into the living room just as Ms. McCall comes hurrying out of the kitchen, scrubs on and bag thrown over her shoulder.

“I’m late,” She announces to the room at large, giving Argent’s cheek a kiss and the Sheriff’s arm a squeeze as she rushes by, “Try not to burn the house down while I’m gone.”

Corey goes red with embarrassment, misadventure with a family-sized box of pizza bagels two nights ago not forgotten. Ms. McCall grins conspiratorially at him to remove the sting as she opens the front door, then waves to the rest of room and closes it behind her with a distracted _see you tonight_ directed at Scott. Scott, returned to the couch now with breakfast and a still mostly-asleep Malia curled in his lap, shouts out a _bye, mom!_ , as she disappears.

Theo jumps a bit when Liam elbows him, turning to look at him questioningly. Liam just nods down at the untouched sandwich in Theo’s lap, already three-quarters through his own. Rolling his eyes, Theo retrieves the sandwich and starts unwrapping it, listening as various members of the pack pick up quiet, individual conversations about everything and nothing, the calm of the earlier morning returning as everyone sets thoughts of Monroe and her hunters aside.

Eventually members of the pack start breaking off. The Sheriff heads to the station, Argent following him to compare notes. Corey, Mason, and Liam commandeer the kitchen table to start catching up on homework now that their ironclad excuse for missing class has conveniently fled the county. Stiles and Lydia, headed back shortly to their universities in Boston and Washington, respectively, have to finish packing, much to Stiles’ vocal irritation. They head out with a clatter of keys and a suspiciously long interlude in the foyer, Derek following Stiles’ finger hooked through his belt-loop with an expression of resignation—fond and otherwise—on his face.

Ultimately, though, Derek stays behind; he, Scott, and Malia had been running patrols of Beacon Hills and the wider Beacon County daily, looking for signs of Monroe or her followers. Initially Liam had protested his exclusion from these runs, but after Scott—whose strategic acumen is always, inexplicably, underestimated, which Theo is qualified to state from _extremely painful_ experience—takes him aside, he subsists. Theo, who had felt only the slightest bit of shame in eavesdropping, had heard Scott tell Liam, _I need you to stay here_ , voice low and serious, then, _not everyone in this pack is supernatural_ , with a meaningful look at the various humans sprinkled in between the supernaturals throughout the living room. As a tactic, it was as obvious as it was effective; Liam had come out of that conversation with a look on his face like he simultaneously knew he was being played and had accepted the truth of it regardless.

Theo takes advantage of the other pack members’ various distractions to take a long, blissfully uninterrupted hot shower; three full bathrooms split between eleven people did not a comfortable schedule make. Twenty minutes later, he steps out of the shower and grabs a towel, then once dry, reaches for the pile of new clothes he’d dropped next to the sink. They’re all high-end brands, though Theo doesn’t recognize any of them, Lydia having done most of the selecting while Theo—after his initial efforts at input were ignored with admirable aplomb—resigned himself to spending the next several hours as a bitingly sarcastic, anthropomorphic dress-up doll.

At first, Theo had objected to Lydia’s suggestion—with _suggestion_ in the biggest air-quotes available—that she accompany Theo to Beacon Hills Mall to refresh his wardrobe with extreme prejudice, but after Lydia had pulled out a sleek black credit card and said _it’s Peter’s money_ with obvious relish, he’d immediately changed his tune. His character growth of the last few weeks notwithstanding, that was exactly the kind of petty vindictiveness that Theo could get behind.

Theo steps out of the bathroom still toweling his hair dry, absently making a mental list of groceries in need of restocking in the McCall kitchen—milk, eggs, that weird Icelandic yogurt that Mason had successfully gotten the rest of the pack addicted to—when he hears his name.

He glances to the side to see Scott jogging back towards him from where he’d been about to start down the stairs, “Good timing, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

Theo’s heart-rate spikes at that and he and Scott both know it, but Scott does him the immense service of pretending he doesn’t notice. Instead he comes to a stop a few feet from Theo and starts shifting the motorcycle helmet he’s holding from hand to hand, looking—and smelling—more nervous than he had three days ago, when he’d been t-minus thirty minutes from a solo dinner with Malia and her father. His nervousness conversely settles something in Theo, who has learned that Scott only gets anxious over human things, easily-surmountable things; life-changing threats get focus, determination, a calm so settled as to be bedrock.

“I have a favor to ask,” Scott finally says, sounding like he’s confessing to something.

Theo drapes the towel in his hands around his neck and then, after Scott fails to continue, prompts, “Okay. And?”

Scott’s next words come all in a rush, like he’s trying to get them out before he loses his nerve, “I don’t know what you were doing before Monroe’s hunters took you, if you have something you need to get back to.” _Someone to get back to_ goes unsaid, but in either case it’s equally unnecessary, “But I was hoping I could convince you to stay, here, in Beacon Hills. At least for a little while.”

Theo just blinks at him, nonplussed. Liam’s post-adrenaline key-throwing antics aside, there’s a difference between not being kicked out and being asked to stay. Theo had remained successfully on the side of the former for the past week, but he’d known that sooner or later the real world would reassert itself and the bubble that the McCall pack had created for itself—seemingly out-of-time, untouched—would pop. The pack would go back to their individual lives, still inextricably tied together by that _something_ that makes packs, packs, and Theo…

Theo would go back to his rootless, mercenary, solitary existence.

Grimacing at his own thoughts, Theo mentally shakes himself and refocuses on Scott, “You want me to stay? Why?”

This part Scott seems ready for; he straightens his shoulders like he’s preparing to give a speech—which definitely means he practiced this with someone, possibly Derek or Stiles but more probably Lydia—and stops fidgeting.

“Mason, Corey,” Here he pauses, almost imperceptibly, “Liam. They deserve a shot at a normal senior year.”

Theo’s taken aback, a bit, by the thin thread of jealousy he tags in Scott’s voice, but Scott keeps going and he doesn’t have time to fully digest it.

“I’ve been talking to some of the others. Stiles and Lydia are headed back to the east coast for school, but Chris, Derek, Malia, and I…” He hesitates, one cheek briefly caught between his teeth, “There’s no way Monroe is just going to give up. She’s out there, somewhere, and she’s going to keep gathering followers and hunting down supernaturals.”

_Innocent kids_ , he doesn’t say, but it’s there in the suddenly heavy silence; not just Brett and Lori, but naive fools like Gabe, too, caught up in Monroe’s powerful current and then drowned by it.

“You’re going after her,” Theo finishes for him.

Scott nods, “The Sheriff is going to keep an eye on things around here, let us know if anything suspicious happens. But if something _does_ happen, if Monroe comes back here, comes after Liam or Corey,” _or Mason, or Parrish, or Peter, or…_ “I know Liam and the others could handle it, but I don’t want them to have to, you know?”

Theo does know, and it’s so very typically _Scott_ ; protective, a little naive, almost messianistic if it weren’t for Scott’s pure intentions. Practiced or not, Scott’s shoulders have hunched like he’s waiting to be called out for being, well. Protective and naive, really, but Theo can’t fault him. Still…

“Admirable,” He tells Scott, “But you still haven’t said what this has to do with me.”

Truthfully Theo knows, but he’s been an infiltrator, a spy, nearly his entire life, and it’s hard to shake those habits: _admit nothing, deny everything_. And beneath that, there’s a smaller, more vulnerable place at the core of him that can’t believe that Scott’s asking what he’s asking; that he’s admitting what he’s admitting. There’s a part of him that needs to hear Scott say it, and say it without prompting.

Scott gets this narrow-eyed look like he knows what Theo’s thinking, but humors him regardless, “I was hoping you’d agree to stay here, help protect the town.”

He means _protect them_ —Liam, Mason, Corey, his mother, Stiles’ dad, even that little idiot Nolan, in case Monroe decides to take his betrayal personally—but Theo appreciates that Scott’s trying to give Theo—and possibly himself—more credit than he really deserves. Unstated, too, is the less flattering fact that Theo ultimately has much more in common with someone like Monroe than people like Liam or the Sheriff do; defeated but not destroyed, Monroe would inevitably switch to sabotage, deception, infiltration, and Theo practically wrote that playbook. Having him around ups the chances that Monroe or her followers wouldn’t be able to insinuate themselves back into Beacon Hills without anyone noticing.

Theo deliberately forces himself to think all of this, overly-analytical and coolly logical, because Scott’s words have ignited a slow-burning ember in his chest and he’s desperately trying to keep it off his face. He was right; he’d known what was coming and he was also right that he’d needed to hear it, but he hadn’t realized—hadn’t anticipated—just how badly. The heat in his chest, the small diamond-hard knowledge that someone—that _Scott_ , true alpha Scott, whose pack Theo once decimated, who Theo once killed—would trust him with the lives of the people closest to him…

Theo doesn’t know what to do with that, so he shoves the feeling of it—that fire-warm ember—into the protective cage of his ribs, where he already knows he’ll seek it out on nights when he wakes up shivering, freezing, still feeling the cold, lifeless hands of his sister, of Josh and Tracy, driving into his chest.

Downstairs, there’s a loud _screech_ as one of the homework crew stands up from the table and sends their chair skidding back on the kitchen tile, and Theo realizes instantly that the silence has gone on too long. Scott’s expression is starting to slide from expectant to curious to alarmed as Scott—who will never be a born wolf like Derek, who still has to puzzle out sometimes what the rhythms of people’s hearts and the scents of their skin mean—nonetheless picks something up from whatever Theo’s useless body is giving away and goes to open his mouth.

“Okay,” Theo blurts out, cutting him off before he can speak, suddenly irrationally afraid that Scott‘s going to take it back, say _nevermind, forget it_ , “Just until you find Monroe, right?” Scott nods, still looking perturbed but thankfully silent, “Okay. I’ll stay until then.”

Theo thinks _let it go_ silently, aggressively, but Scott’s still looking at him through narrowed eyes, obviously trying to untangle the mess of signals his supernatural senses are picking up. If there’s one thing that Theo knows without a doubt, it’s that he can’t handle the conversation that would no doubt ensue, and so he calls on the personality he’d worn when he first got to Beacon Hills, the facade that had let him insinuate himself into the town’s everyday rhythms with nary a hiccup. He pulls it on like he’s pulling an a favorite shirt, worn soft from use, and lets himself sink into it, his heart-rate immediately steadying and his scent returning to baseline. It’s really almost more suspicious, but Theo knows how to pair it with action to make it flawless, shakes out the last of the tension in his shoulders and reaches up to grab both ends of the towel hanging around his neck, knows Scott’s eyes will instinctually track the movement; a distraction.

“You should probably get going,” He points out casually, like their conversation had reached its natural conclusion, and what was Scott still hanging around for? He nods towards the helmet forgotten in Scott’s hands, “Derek and Malia are probably waiting for you.”

Scott looks down at the helmet like it’s the first time he’s seeing it, frowning. He looks back up at Theo and the question—the concern—is still there, but Theo can see it fading as Theo’s complete one-eighty in body language projects a perfect ease that Scott’s hindbrain can’t help reacting to. That, and Derek and Malia probably really are waiting; it’s why Theo said what he said, an infiltrator’s instincts striking true.

“Well, great,” Scott finally says, visibly shaking off the last of his hesitation, “That’s great, I— _we_ —really appreciate it. We’ll figure out the details when I get back, okay?”

He says this over his shoulder, already headed back for the stairs with his mind clearly on his upcoming patrol. Theo sketches out a sloppy salute in answer and only lets his shoulders drop, the facade fall away, when he hears the front door slam. He stands there for a long time, long past when he can no longer hear Scott’s dirt bike even with supernatural hearing, and then he inhales and puts his hands against that ember hidden deep within his chest, just once, just for a second.

And then he breathes out, thinks to himself _milk, eggs, yogurt,_ and forces himself back into motion, everything else forcibly put aside.

Milk. Eggs. Yogurt.

\---

Derek gives him the keys to one of the apartments in his building and then a _look_ when Theo makes noise about how Derek expects him to afford a place in his ridiculously hipster, postmodern mess of a complex. The look is withering enough that it successfully ends that line of discussion, though Theo still feels weird every time he unlocks the front door.

It takes Theo—who had spent the weeks before his capture living out of his truck, whose greatest number of possessions comes from the clothes that Lydia had foisted on him during the Great Pack Sleepover—all of five minutes to move in, with four and a half of those minutes spent on the elevator ride up. He drops two duffel bags just inside the massive, empty apartment, ignoring Liam at his back attempting to look over his shoulder, and knows before anyone even speaks what’s coming.

“There’s an IKEA off I-80,” Mason points out from the hallway, the rest of the pack ringing the front door since they had all, for whatever reason, insisted on coming up.

“Between Theo’s truck and Derek’s Toyota we should be able to fit everything,” Lydia decides, and turns on one heel to start heading back towards the elevator.

Theo knows two things with immediate and stark certainty: if he attempts to protest, Lydia will railroad over him with embarrassing ease, and Peter Hale’s bank account is about to take another significant hit. His expression unable to decide whether it wants to grimace or smirk, Theo just sighs and follows the rest of the pack as they troop dutifully back down to the cars.

Thus begins the McCall pack field trip to the Sacramento IKEA and an afternoon of Theo—now a veteran of shopping with Lydia Martin—trailing after the pack and feeling pettily vindicated every time one of the other members makes a suggestion and gets shot down. Credit where credit is due, though, he can’t fault her logic when Scott and Stiles attempt to pick out a couch and Lydia shakes her head, saying _he needs a pull-out, unless you think no one is ever going to wind up bleeding and needing to sleep it off in his apartment_.

It may be a depressing indictment of their lifestyles, but that doesn’t make it untrue.

They purchase everything Lydia deems necessary at IKEA—dining set, kitchen implements, coffee table, bed frame, nightstand, linens, dresser, and a handful of bookshelves that Theo insists he has nothing to put into—and then drop the collective haul and the majority of the pack back off at Theo’s apartment to start assembling. Scott, Derek, and Theo, she makes head back out to a nearby furniture store to pick up the aforementioned pull-out couch and a mattress, since not even Theo—in Lydia’s words—deserves to sleep on an IKEA mattress.

The comment should sting, probably, but Theo surprises himself by simply snorting a laugh and giving Lydia a dry look from the other side of a showroom pillow-top, the salesman continuing manfully on with his pitch in the face of what must seem like some kind of inside-joke. Half an hour later, additional furniture purchased and hauled into Theo’s truck bed and onto the top of Derek’s Toyota—the parking lot thankfully nearly deserted since all of them are starving and a little more careless with displays of their supernatural strength than they might otherwise be—they head back to the apartment, stopping along the way to pick up a half-dozen extra-large pizzas of various toppings and several litres of soda.

They take the food up first, operating under the mistaken assumption that five people, three of whom possess supernaturally-enhanced abilities, would have been able to assemble most of the furniture—including the kitchen table—in the hours they’ve been gone. When they step through the door, though, the apartment looks like some kind of shoproom in which all of the employees had to suddenly drop everything and evacuate midway through their workday.

“What the hell,” Derek says blankly, while half a foot back Lydia just sighs and Scott, hands full of pizza boxes that smell like grease and other delicious carcinogens, whines _seriously?_ , in a tone that does absolutely nothing for his alpha nature.

The reason for the lack of progress becomes clear quickly enough. Liam and Mason are sat next to the half-finished kitchen table—which is upside-down, one leg sticking forlornly up in the air—and each have an IKEA chair box in front of them, Stiles off to the side with his phone open to the stopwatch app as they apparently compete to see who can put together their chair faster. It isn’t a fair fight—which everyone but Liam appears to realize—since Corey is sitting behind him, fully camouflaged and occasionally stealing some of Liam’s pieces; Theo watches as a screw hovers nonchalantly in the air for a split-second before it disappears.

Everyone who’d been on assembling duty—except for Malia, who’s dutifully twisting a screw into a three-quarters finished bookshelf using one claw—freezes when they realize the rest of the pack has returned.

“Uh,” Liam says eloquently, and then notices Corey—gone visible in surprise—behind him with his lapful of hardware, “ _Hey!_ ”

Derek rolls his eyes so hard that Theo can practically feel it. He sets his armful of pizzas on the upside-down table instead of the floor and then grabs Stiles by the back of his shirt, hauling him up and shoving him towards the kitchen, “Go wash plates and glasses for everybody. Mason, help him.”

Mason goes, scrambling up and after Stiles, who is alternating between mock indignation at being manhandled and faux-swooning at the same, neither of which anyone is paying any attention to.

“Liam, you’re coming downstairs to help carry the couch up,” Liam pauses from where he’d been reaching for the pizza boxes, lack of plate be damned; Derek’s tone of voice is pretty unmistakable.

“What about Malia?” Liam protests weakly, since Malia has in fact trotted over to the pizza boxes and already helped herself to a slice of Hawaiian, a fully assembled bookshelf in her wake.

“Malia was actually assembling furniture when we walked in,” Scott points out mildly.

Liam huffs but abandons the pizza boxes to come stand next to Theo, who’s in the process of handing off his armful of two-litres to Corey, who’d preemptively scrambled to make himself useful before Derek could growl at him, too. Lydia smirks and goes to retrieve the boxes from the half-constructed table, stopping briefly to kiss Derek on the cheek. Then she looks at Corey and jerks her chin towards the kitchen.

“Come on, Corey, we’ll set all this down in the kitchen and then finish getting the table set up while they bring up the furniture.”

Corey—and Malia, clearly interested only in more pizza—follow her. Scott heads that way briefly, too, to set his armful of boxes down on the kitchen counters, and then he, Derek, Theo, and Liam head back down to the cars. They manage to bring both the couch and mattress up in a single trip, Derek and Scott wrestling the couch, Liam and Theo the mattress, all of them squeezed tightly into the building’s single freight elevator.

Lydia has managed to make order out of chaos by the time they’ve returned; the kitchen table is fully assembled and upright and the half-constructed chairs have been relocated against the wall, their various pieces and bits of hardware stacked neatly on top. Stiles and Mason are in the process of setting out dishes, the glasses still gleaming wet from where they’d been freshly washed.

Mason, Stiles, and Lydia play air traffic controllers as first Liam and Theo, then Scott and Derek, come through the door with their burdens. Malia and Corey jump in to help make maneuvering easier, and between the lot of them they manage to get the couch set in its proper place and the mattress propped against the wall—ready for when the bed frame actually successfully gets assembled—in quick order.

After that, it’s basically a free-for-all in the kitchen.

Theo gets a plate and a couple of slices and then gets the hell out of the way. He leaves the rest of the pack jockeying for seats on his— _his_ , what the hell—new couch and whatever random other seating they can find and starts wandering around the apartment, absently calculating its dimensions as he walks from wall to wall. Nearly identical to Derek’s, the first floor is basically one big room with two brick walls built at perpendicular angles with a large gap between them to make the kitchen. The spiral staircase off to one side is as immensely impractical as it looked the first time he saw it, but Theo sets that aside and climbs it up to the second floor loft.

The boxes with his bed frame and another of the completely superfluous bookshelves sit exactly where they’d been left several hours ago. There’s a stack of linens set to the side of it, and it takes Theo a minute of staring at the building blocks of his new bedroom, trying to figure out what’s missing, to realize they’ve somehow neglected to remember lamps. It matters less than it could, though, since the gigantic glass windows that dominate the first floor have smaller, but no less impressive siblings in the loft; coming to stand in front of them, Theo can see Beacon Hills stretched out and glittering in the falling night.

He gets a little lost staring out at the view, and doesn’t snap out of it until he hears the distinctive sound of someone clambering up the impractical staircase. He hears Liam speaking before he sees his head pop up over the loft’s edge.

“What the hell are you doing up here, did you get lost?” As soon as Liam finishes clambering up, though, he stops, caught by the same view, “Oh, wow.”

He comes to stand by Theo, and closer than he probably needs to be; their shoulders brush. Theo glances at him as he stares out at the city, the warmth of Liam’s arm bleeding steadily into his.

Liam shakes himself out of it relatively quickly, “C’mon, come back downstairs.”

He makes Theo precede him down the steps like Theo’s going to make a break for it, try and stay up on the second floor. Theo, who can distinctly remember the sight of his keys sailing gracefully through the fall-chilled air of the preserve before landing _somewhere_ in the mess of dead leaves and dirt, goes without argument; he may not yet have any furniture to break up here in a scramble, but that doesn’t mean Liam couldn’t find some way to destroy _something_ within the first twenty-four hours of Theo moving in.

He ends up sat on one arm of the couch, Mason’s elbow occasionally digging into his side as Mason tries and fails to maneuver in the small space left to him, Corey on his other side and Lydia and Stiles beyond him. Apparently Theo’s desensitization to Scott’s absent-minded touches hasn’t worn off yet, because Theo finds himself oddly unbothered by it, just shifts to try and give Mason some more room without falling off the arm.

Sat on the ground in front of the couch, Derek is trying to teach Scott, Liam, and Malia some Hale family party trick— _it’s not a party trick, Stiles, it’s a training exercise_ , Derek had protested grouchily earlier, to absolutely zero effect—in which they have to bring certain claws out but not others; index and middle, middle and pinky, and so on. Derek can do it with hypnotic ease, but the others are having mixed results; Scott can do it, but only painstakingly slowly, while Liam and Malia try and mostly fail.

This time when Mason nudges Theo, it’s purposeful, “Can you do that?” He asks, looking genuinely curious.

Theo smirks and sticks out first his right hand, runs through the set of exercises that Derek had showed in quick order, then does the same with his left. Mason looks suitably impressed, as does Derek when Theo absently glances upward and catches his eye. He studies Theo thoughtfully and Theo just barely manages to clamp down on his heart-rate before it can spike, feeling oddly caught.

Scott winds up breaking the moment seconds later, “Alright, we should probably get back to it. You guys have school tomorrow and Stiles’ flight leaves early.”

There’s a collective dramatic groan from the school-bound crowd, while Stiles suddenly swears, apparently having forgotten to check-in. The point ends up being moot, since Lydia had checked him in earlier; Stiles grins and says, _you know me so well_ , attempts to plant a sloppy kiss on her cheek but gets intercepted by Lydia’s hand on his face, pushing him away, her scent nonetheless pleased. Dinner break officially over, everyone fills up Theo’s new dishwasher with their plates, pizza boxes stacked by the door to be taken to the trash room, and then returns to the main room, where Lydia is assigning various pack members to pieces of furniture still in need of assembling.

Since Liam, Mason, and Stiles are officially banned from touching the chairs again, they get sent upstairs to set up the bed frame, nightstand, and bookshelf, helped—and supervised—by Scott. Derek, Theo, and Corey take the chairs, while Malia—already 1-0 versus IKEA bookshelves—sets up the third and last of those and Lydia gets to work on the coffee table. The downstairs crew finishes quickly enough, but it’s still edging towards late by the time Lydia checks her phone and then calls up to Stiles to check on their progress.

Stiles pokes his head over the loft railing, “The nightstand and bookshelf have been successfully assembled.” He reports, and Lydia gives him a dry look, clearly noting the glaring absence, “Look, these pictures are less clear than they could be, alright?”

“It’s a _bed frame_ ,” Lydia says skeptically, “It’s pretty much a giant square.”

Theo, who at this point has begun to feel pretty exhausted himself and keeps eyeing the mattress still propped against the wall longingly, cuts in before Stiles can respond and the argument can really gain steam, “I can finish setting it up, you guys can go.”

“You sure?” Scott asks, appearing at Stiles’ side so that he can peer down at Theo.

“I think I can handle it,” Theo confirms wryly.

There’s a brief cacophony of noise as Stiles, Scott, Mason, and Liam come trooping down the stairs, and then a few minutes of confusion as everyone locates jackets, keys; as Scott confirms with Derek where the trash room is located and guilts Stiles into helping him carry the boxes and empty soda bottles to it. Throughout this process Theo just leans against his outsized new table with its six chairs, a smaller table and four chairs apparently having been insufficiently forward-looking regardless of Theo’s claims that he wasn’t really planning on hosting any dinner parties.

Eventually the pack gets sorted into its various vehicle groups, Scott once again taking possession of Stiles’ Jeep, Corey and Mason with him since their neighborhoods are on his way home. Malia and Lydia have their own cars, and Derek is dropping Stiles off at his house to spend his last night in town with his dad. It’s only then that Theo realizes Liam isn’t among any of the groups and is instead sprawled across the couch and in the process of folding one of the pizza place napkins into some kind of shape.

“You planning on walking?” Theo asks him pointedly.

“I’m going to help you finish setting up the bed frame and then you can give me a ride,” Liam answers absently, attention still clearly on the napkin.

“Oh, can I?” Theo responds wryly, but he waves off Scott when Scott goes to open his mouth, almost undoubtedly about to “offer” to take Liam home as well.

Scott shrugs and motions to Corey and Mason and starts heading out, “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” Theo nods in acknowledgement; since Theo would be taking over Scott’s, Derek’s, and Malia’s patrols in anticipation of them heading out to track down Monroe, they’d all agreed that he’d start running the patrols with them.

Theo says a steady stream of _see you laters_ , _byes_ , and—reserved for Stiles—a slightly sarcastic _have fun at school_ as the pack heads out; he and Stiles may have called what amounts to a truce, but they’re both still feeling each other out, trying to identify the contours of their new relationship, and they both know it. Stiles flips him off over his shoulder as he follows Derek out, but there’s no malice in it, his scent easy and distracted.

The front door rolls shut behind Stiles, leaving Theo and Liam alone. Theo glances at him just in time to see him finish whatever he was trying to accomplish with the napkin; he sits up and brandishes a lopsided paper crane in Theo’s direction with a satisfied, “ _Ha_.”

Theo raises a skeptical eyebrow at it, “Congratulations.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Liam says, already on his feet and heading towards one of the glaringly empty bookshelves. He places the paper crane smack in the center of the middle shelf; pride of place, “There.”

“It really ties the room together,” Theo agrees blandly, and catches Liam effortlessly when he lunges at him.

Neither one of them really has the energy for the brief wrestling match that follows, but Theo is still several leagues more underhanded, so he gets Liam pinned on his back, one of Theo’s shins braced over his hip-bones and holding him down, in short order. He grins a captured-canary grin down at Liam and makes a point to brace most of his weight on Liam as he stands, Liam making a breathy _oof_ as he does. The spike of _something_ that sound sends bolting through Theo is ignored easily enough, since he’s spent the last several days doing exactly that, crammed onto an air mattress that really only had aspirations of being able to fit two people.

“If you’re going to help, then help,” Theo tells him once he’s up, holding out one hand to Liam and then hauling him up when Liam takes it, “I want to go to sleep and your house isn’t exactly close.”

This time it’s Theo that makes Liam walk ahead him up the stairs, ignoring Liam’s pointed observations about that fact. Given Stiles’ status report he’d expected the bed frame to be in mildly bad shape, but in reality it’s really almost done; they’d mixed up two of the panels at some point, apparently, but had already fixed it and started work on the rest of it when the halt had been called. As such, it only takes Theo and Liam twenty minutes to finish setting it up.

It’s the mattress that ends up being the sticking point.

“I think maybe you shouldn’t have sent everyone home,” Liam comments from where he’s half-buried under the mattress at the bottom of the stairs, Theo halfway up and neither of them with any glaring insights into how to successfully get it up to the loft.

“Shut up,” Theo responds automatically, but Liam’s right, and they both know it.

Ten more minutes of fruitless strategizing later and Theo throws in the towel.

“Screw it,” He says, slightly out of breath from where their latest attempt had mostly just succeeded in pinning Theo against the railing and driving the mattress into his chest, “Just help me put it back where it was, I’ll get Derek to show me whatever black magic he used to get his mattress up to his loft tomorrow.”

Liam says, “Where are you going to sleep, then?” but moves to help Theo put the mattress back against the wall regardless.

The answer is the pull-out couch, which Theo has absolutely no plans to admit to Lydia. He hunts around until he finds what someone had apparently designated as the linen closet and pulls out the extra set of sheets while Liam hauls the coffee table out of the way. The couch is easy enough to unfold between the two of them, and Liam even helps him put on the sheets and spread one of the handful of extra blankets Lydia had insisted they purchase on top.

That settled, Theo is turning towards the kitchen—his keys tossed onto one of the counters since he hadn’t known where else to put them in his previously under-construction apartment—but Liam just throws himself onto the pull-out mattress and makes himself comfortable.

Theo stops and squints at him, “I thought I was taking you home.”

“No point,” Liam answers easily, “The school is closer and all my stuff is in my locker. You can drop me off on your way to meet up with Scott and the others.”

Theo thinks about arguing, he really does, but there’s a part of him that’s grown accustomed to being surrounded by the noise and scent of a full—bursting, really—house, and that part of him, well. It hadn’t been _dreading_ returning to the huge, not-so-empty-anymore apartment—it was certainly several dozen steps up from having to return to his truck—but being able to put that off for one more night settles something in him that he hadn’t been aware was restless. But he makes sure to roll his eyes as he heads back to the linen closet for a second pillow, Liam watching him for his reaction.

“Fine,” He says shortly.

He does make sure to hit Liam squarely in the face with the pillow when Liam adds, “I’m going to need to borrow some clothes, though.”

\---

The first thing Theo does when the pack settles into its new status quo—Lydia and Stiles back on the East Coast; Liam, Mason, and Corey back at BHHS; Scott, Derek, Malia, and Argent using Beacon Hills as a home base in their search for Monroe; everyone kept informed through a sprawling group text message that is only topical maybe ten percent of the time—is renew all of his old contacts from his Dread Doctor days.

He visits all of the grocery stores, gas stations, and diners throughout Beacon County, feeding the cashiers and wait staff the same story each time to explain away his absence; a sick grandparent culminating in a beautiful funeral service, saying _thank you_ in a quiet, grateful voice each time they express their condolences. He weaves subtle questions into the ensuing meandering updates about Macey’s grandchildren, Pedro's prized hunting dogs, looking for any hint of Monroe and her followers. There’s nothing—or nothing they’ve noticed, anyway—but Theo primes them as subtly as he can to keep an eye out, feeding them stories of exes and family friends and coworkers, weaving in descriptions of Monroe and her followers as primary actors.

Gossip and the human instinct to pry—two of the most effective tools he has.

The second thing he does is run Argent to ground and convince him to spend a week teaching Theo everything he can think of regarding Argent family hunting tactics and strategies. Theo knows that whatever modifications or adaptations Monroe may make to her own methods, she would have to build off of what Gerard taught her, and Gerard taught his son; Theo wants whatever advantage he can get. Argent agrees readily enough, the logic obvious to him, too.

The first day, he tells Theo to meet him in the middle of the preserve and then ambushes him when he shows. Theo, running at a flat-out sprint and trying to dodge crossbow bolts, to avoid being hemmed in by emitters, swears; it’s instantly clear that he’s gotten soft, complacent, surrounded by the McCall pack and subconsciously confident in having them at his back. The chase ends soon after with Theo pinned to a tree by one forearm and a thigh, Argent pointing a wolfsbane-loaded gun at his forehead; Theo can smell the acrid sting even from fifteen feet away.

Theo cuts him off before he can speak, snarling, “Spare me the debrief—I know.”

Argent laughs under his breath and holsters the gun, comes forward to break off the crossbow bolts so Theo can free himself, “Meet me back here tomorrow, same time.”

But Theo knows better, now, old instincts shaking themselves back to life. He gets there hours before he’s ostensibly supposed to meet Argent to familiarize himself with the terrain, start planning his strategy. He still has to disarm several traps, and narrowly escapes getting caught in an incredibly well-disguised snare; he misses it by bare centimeters, and knows instantly that he’s just given his position away as the rope snaps taut with a _crack_ that echoes through the quiet forest. He manages to catch the first crossbow bolt that comes hissing towards him, but only gets away thanks to his earlier reconnaissance.

Hours later, sweating and filthy and starving, Theo stands next to his truck and wrenches his dislocated wrist back into place, Argent watching from beside his own SUV.

“Better,” Argent says simply, tossing his duffle bag full of weapons into the back of his car, “Tomorrow, same time.”

The rest of the week passes in the same fashion, Theo steadily improving until he’s capable of staying out of Argent’s grasp nine times out of ten. By the end of it, Theo has broken five ribs, dislocated his right shoulder twice, and outright shattered his left tibia on the seventh day. Argent does shoot him that time, and shoots him while he’s down; Theo will never forget the feeling of staring up at him, helpless, his healing stalled from the wolfsbane and black blood leaking through the fingers he’s trying to press over the bullet wound to his gut.

As an object lesson, it’s brutally effective.

Argent heals him there in the dirt, ruined shirt pushed up to allow him to touch a lighter to the wound. Theo nearly bites off his tongue trying not to yell, and needs a few long minutes lying flat on his back, unmoving, to recover, Argent sitting calmly next to him.

Once he does recover, he finds Argent studying him thoughtfully.

“What?” Theo snaps, bloody and hurting and not in the mood.

“You did well,” Argent responds, and then stands in one smooth movement, “You’re as ready as I can make you.”

He offers Theo a hand up, which Theo accepts after a moment’s hesitation, a little thrown. When they get back to the cars, Argent pulls a clean shirt out of his seemingly-bottomless duffle bag and tosses it to him.

“Follow me back to Melissa’s,” He instructs Theo, tone leaving no room for argument, “She texted to say she made way too much pasta and needs people to come eat it.”

Theo, who’d already planned out the rest of his night—a shower, if he thought he could stay awake through it, followed by collapsing into bed for the foreseeable future—surprises himself by agreeing without contest. He ends up having to park in front of a neighbor’s house, the driveway taken up by Ms. McCall’s sedan and the Jeep, Malia’s car, Derek’s Toyota, and Argent’s SUV parked on the street nearby. When Ms. McCall opens the door to let him in he’s immediately hit with the smell of warm food and _pack_ , and it leaves him dizzy for a moment; he tells himself it’s the blood loss, and ignores the unimpressed voice scoffing in the back of his head.

“Hey, Theo, come in,” Ms. McCall says absently, holding the door open for him, attention on something happening in the living room, “Chris mentioned you were training, you’ve got time to run up for a shower if you want before the food’s ready.”

Theo tosses an accusing look over her shoulder at Argent, who looks completely unrepentant over the lip of his beer as he comes out of the kitchen. Too tired to argue and thrown by the absence of annoyance at being tricked into coming to an apparent pack dinner—the opposite of it, actually, not that he’d admit it if asked—Theo takes her up on her offer and heads up to shower, familiar enough with the McCall house now to move on autopilot.

He comes back down to find the rest of the pack—including the Sheriff and Parrish, who had appeared at some point while Theo was in the shower with a boxful of cannolis from _Giovanni’s_ downtown—arrayed around the living and dining rooms with heaping platefuls of pasta and garlic bread. Scott, Liam, and Corey are deep in an involved discussion of lacrosse tactics on the couch, while Derek talks quietly with the Sheriff, Parrish, and Argent in the dining room. Malia, Mason, and Ms. McCall are still in the kitchen making plates when Theo walks in, talking idly about Mason’s classes, Ms. McCall’s coworkers, Malia’s new obsession with _pho_ ; the types of easy, absent-minded conversations of people who know each other well enough to share those kinds of meaningless details. Theo gets a plate, doing his best not to interrupt.

He isn’t successful; Ms. McCall smiles sympathetically at him and says, “He really ran you ragged, didn’t he?”

It takes Theo a moment to figure out first that she’s talking to him and then to understand what she’s talking about, and then he grimaces, realizing just how exhausted he must look. He nods, the shakiness of his own limbs starting to catch up with him, “It’s good, though. I’ll have a better shot if—” He cuts himself off, irrationally unwilling to bring Monroe into the conversation, into the McCall house and the pack’s dinner, “I’m more prepared, now.” He finishes, lamely.

There’s a knowing look in Ms. McCall’s eyes but she doesn’t push him. Or doesn’t push him to finish the thought, anyway; she _does_ take his plate from him and gently steer him towards the couch, kicking her son off of it as she does, “Sit down before you fall down. I remember what Scott used to be like after days like you’ve had, before he’d gotten a chance to eat.”

She waits until he’s all but collapsed onto the vacated spot and then hands him back his plate, then a fork. Theo takes them from her, a little bemused at being so shamelessly mothered, adds it to the list of things he can’t remember experiencing before the past few weeks. He sets the feeling aside quickly, though, his appetite returning with a vengeance now that he’s sat with a full plate of steaming food. He eats quickly, letting the conversations around him fade into a sort of soothing white noise, and then slides his empty plate onto the coffee table, telling himself he’ll take it into the kitchen in a few minutes; he just needs to rest his eyes for a moment.

He wakes up several hours later to a dark and nearly empty living room, now lying flat on the couch with Ms. McCall pulling a blanket over him. She notices that he’s woken up and smiles softly at him, puts a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Go back to sleep, the couch is yours for the night.”

He means to protest, say that he can make it back to his apartment, no problem, but he’s asleep again before he can get the words out.

He wakes up the next morning to an empty house, a note on the coffee table in front of him to help himself to the fridge. There’s a key placed innocuously on top of the note. Struck by conflicting surges of warmth and ice at the sight, Theo pushes himself to his feet and heads for the door without detouring to the kitchen, blanket folded neatly on the couch behind him and front door locked behind him using the key. That, he threads onto his key-ring after a too-long chunk of time spent staring at it, sat in his truck outside of the McCall house.

When he gets back to his apartment, there’s a small package outside his door. Theo stops and stares at it blankly, then pokes it experimentally with one foot. It smells fine—like recycled air from a cargo plane and exhaust from having spent time in the back of a delivery truck—and seems otherwise harmless, so Theo picks it up and brings it inside as he goes.

There are things Theo knows he needs to do—run patrol, check in with his contacts, go grocery shopping, replace the lightbulb in the bathroom that went out three days ago that he’s been too lazy to do anything about since he gets decent night-vision if he flares his eyes—but his body is still aching, and he can’t work up the motivation. It’s obvious he’s still healing, the shattered leg and wolfsbane poisoning coming at the tail-end of an already brutal week. Instead, he resigns himself to heading back to sleep and ordering something for delivery when he inevitably wakes up starving.

The unknown package pricks at him, though, from where it’s sat on the counter. Theo studies it and then gives in all at once, curiosity winning out as he pulls it to him.

The address is an unlabeled D.C. one, but this close to the package and less distracted, Theo can smell the barest traces of Stiles. Snorting, Theo mentally prepares himself and extends a single claw to slit it open, then turns it upside down to shake out whatever is inside into his other palm.

It’s a cheap plastic replica of the United States Capitol, obviously purchased at the airport on Stiles’ way back to his dorm once he’d landed in D.C. There’s no note, but Theo doesn’t need one; Stiles had had a whole peanut-gallery routine going about Theo’s three new, completely superfluous and still mostly-empty bookshelves. Theo would recognize it as a subtle dig even without the nearly-faded scent of mischief and—barely detectable, like Stiles was trying to hide it from himself, too—just a hint of vindictiveness.

Theo stares at it, turning it over and over in his hands, too exhausted to sort out the mess of feelings and thoughts whirling around his head. Eventually he stills the cheap _tchotchke_ in his grasp and walks over to one of the bookshelves before he can talk himself out of it, setting it down with a deliberate _click_ next to Liam’s pizza-napkin paper crane.

Then he heads up his impractical staircase and goes back to sleep.

\---

After that, Theo falls into a kind of routine.

He checks in with his contacts and chases down every lead they give him, no matter how tenuous. He runs patrols around Beacon County, switching up his route, his timing, his shape; the citizens of Beacon Hills are convinced that Theo-as-a-human is training for a marathon, and that Theo-as-a-wolf is some kind of strangely well-groomed stray. Between the patrols and his contacts, he manages to catch half-rumors and faded scents, but nothing concrete; it’s clear Monroe is _somewhere_ , and still focused on Beacon Hills—on Scott and the rest of the McCall pack—but she’s smart enough to keep her and her followers’ trails as cold as she can feasibly make them.

Scott, Derek, Malia, and Argent start venturing further out of Beacon Hills as their leads run cold closer to. Their trips get steadily longer—two nights, then four, edging closer to a week—as they hunt for any sign of her. Their luck isn’t much better than Theo’s; sometimes they find hideouts, bases of operation, weapons stashes. But the woman herself is like smoke, her followers like snakes; they slither away every time Scott and the others get close.

What Scott _does_ find, though, are other packs.

From the stories Scott and the others tell afterwards, the first few such meetings were tense, very nearly bloody; the appearance of an unknown alpha, an Argent, a Hale survivor, and a were-coyote in another pack’s territory raising both eyebrows and hackles. But Scott is Scott, and between Derek—the Hale pack well-established before its demise—and Argent—who understands pack dynamics in an admittedly know-your-enemy kind of sense—they not only make it out of those meetings without bloodshed, but with allies. Theo grows accustomed to getting texts from Scott connecting him to various packs as he spreads the word about Monroe, setting up two-way information exchanges up and down the California coast.

A few weeks in, once the sheer amount of information gathered by Theo, the hunting party, and the other packs starts to grow unwieldy, Theo buys a massive map of the western United States and hangs it up on one of his glaringly empty living room walls. He marks down all of the sightings, rumors, and other information he gets, color-coding the different details; information from his contacts he marks green, from his patrols, blue. When Scott, Derek, Malia, and Argent return from their trips they start adding their own markers in red. Between the two groups they fill in information given to them from other packs—coded purple—until, bit by bit, they can start to discern patterns that then help point Scott and the others in their next directions.

The map he orders online, his wallet now containing its own sleek black credit card hooked to Peter Hale’s bank account. The card itself had come as something of a surprise, though in hindsight Theo really should have seen it coming. He’d come back from patrol one evening early on to find an envelope from a bank whose name he hadn’t recognized in his usual stack of junk mail, the paper-stock of the envelope smelling incongruously expensive. Nearly to the second after he’d slit it open and began staring at his name on the card with narrowed eyes, his phone had chirped with a text; Lydia, forestalling any objection by giving him a list of items she wanted him to have on-hand for “pack emergencies.”

Theo had snorted to himself, but had purchased the various strains of wolfsbane and ancient herbs from the sites she had given him without argument, and then tucked the credit card into his wallet behind his grocery store loyalty and his coffee rewards cards, both _also_ foisted on him by meddling pack members. He ends up using it for groceries, gas, the Netflix account Liam insists he sign up for. The one time he’d brought up the card to Peter, who had tagged along to a pack meeting more to annoy Derek and try to weasel his way further into Malia’s affections than to actually help, Peter had given him a dry look—a Hale family speciality, apparently—and then proceeded to completely ignore him, so Theo had taken that as license to do with it what he pleased.

Those routines—checking leads from his contacts, running patrols, participating in strategy sessions with Scott and the hunting party when they return to Beacon Hills—he fully expects from this odd life that, admittedly, he agreed to; what he doesn’t expect are the _other_ routines.

Theo gets tricked into, cajoled, or outright dragged to the now-traditional Sunday night pack dinners often enough that he starts showing up on his reconnaissance. The first time he shows up without an escort Ms. McCall answers the door and just starts laughing, which Theo doesn’t understand until he sees his own reflection; he looks like a man finally resigned to his own fate. They don’t have a chance to address it; Liam yells for him from the living room, and the chaos just continues from there.

The high school lacrosse season now in full-swing, Theo finds himself in the stands every Friday night—instead of on the outskirts patrolling, which is where he started—squeezed in-between Ms. McCall, the Sheriff, and Mason as they cheer on Liam and Corey. He hadn’t meant to join their little spectator section, but both Ms. McCall and the Sheriff had spotted him hovering the first few games and Ms. McCall in particular had started texting him, incessantly and with increasingly on-point and needling commentary, until he’d given in and just started meeting them at the edge of the field before game-time.

After the first pack strategy session held at Theo’s apartment, at which Corey spots Liam’s pizza napkin paper crane still sitting exactly where he left it and Derek sniffs out Stiles’ plastic Capitol beside it with baffled interest, Theo starts receiving ever-more trinkets, knickknacks, and random other tourist-trap _tchotchkes_. Corey finds an interestingly-shaped rock on the lacrosse field—half slagged from some undoubtedly supernatural calamity—and brings it with him the next time he comes to Theo’s, tucking it next to a set of novelty shot glasses Malia had picked up at a beach bar in La Jolla. Lydia, looped into the pack’s strange new pastime via text, sends him a frankly frightening stuffed version of M.I.T.’s beaver mascot and a book one of her professors wrote on code-breaking, the latter of which never makes it onto the bookshelves since it lives permanently on Theo’s nightstand. Stiles, not to be outdone at his own accidentally-commenced game, sends him enough plastic replicas of various D.C. landmarks that Theo is positive he could lay out the whole city in miniature if he ever worked up the motivation.

And then there’s Liam.

No longer able to bum rides off of Stiles, Lydia, or the members of the hunting party—and because Theo refuses to take him anywhere out of principle—Liam finally gets his beat-up old SUV fixed. Theo had it in mind that he’d see _less_ of Liam after that, but in fact he sees him more, Liam crashing his apartment with Corey and Mason to take over Theo’s kitchen table to do homework (“It’s quieter, and no one asks questions if Liam gets frustrated and his eyes start to glow,” Mason explains with a shrug the second or third time Theo opens the door, already vaguely irritated), or showing up solo—usually with take-out from a rotating series of restaurants—to try and weasel additional information out of Theo about the hunt for Monroe.

Every time Liam tries it, Theo hears Scott’s voice in the back of his head— _they deserve a shot at a normal senior year_ —and he always half-heartedly attempts to steer Liam away from it. He nearly always fails, though, and it’s only half due to Liam’s pig-headedness, if that. The rest is Theo’s memories of Liam breaking his hand trying not to kill Nolan after Brett and Lori were murdered, how he’d mourned them and the other massacred supernaturals with a quiet yet pervasive grief that had tasted like ash in the back of Theo’s throat. So he splits the difference, to the extent he can; he doesn’t tell Liam much more than he would have heard from the pack strategy sessions, but he sits and eats silently with him on the couch while Liam stares at the map marking what the pack knows of Monroe’s movements, his food going cold.

The first night that happens, Liam stays staring at the map long enough that he falls asleep sitting up on Theo’s couch. Theo, after a long few minutes’ hesitation, gets him lying down with the gentle pressure of a hand on his shoulder and then covers him with a blanket, his own senses a mess from spending the last several hours tracking Liam’s fluctuating moods—anger, grief, despair, and back again—and he can’t bring himself to wake him up, make him go home. He heads up to his own bed that night with Liam’s heartbeat ringing in his ears.

Theo expects him to wake up embarrassed, but when Liam does stumble into the kitchen the next morning he looks like he’s slept better than he has in a while. Theo, who fell asleep focused entirely on the steady _thump-thump_ of Liam’s heartbeat, who _knows_ that he slept better than he has in a long time, says nothing, just hands Liam a cup of coffee already the creamy color of toffee.

Liam is late to first period that day, and it isn’t the last time it happens.

He only does it irregularly, obviously triggered by unexpected things throughout his days, though Theo never manages to identify _which_. Liam, for all that he shows up food-in-hand like a bribe, rarely wants to talk, and Theo—who knows what that’s like—doesn’t push him. Instead, after he finishes eating whatever Liam’s brought over as his token excuse, he starts leaving him alone on the couch with his grief, his anger, and reads the books that Lydia—and, increasingly, Derek—send or bring him, or watches mindless TV on his laptop on his bed upstairs. He doesn’t hover, but he makes sure he’s _present_ , makes sure to turn the pages of his current book loudly, or leaves the headphones off. It’s hard to tell how much it helps; sometimes Liam leaves without saying anything, and sometimes he climbs up the World’s Most Impractical Staircase and harasses Theo until he scoots over and Liam can claim half the bed for himself, face-down and turned away from Theo, his heartbeat and scent slowly leveling out until he falls asleep.

Theo tries not to think too hard about those nights, about how he dreams about innocuous things, normal things, instead of his usual nightmares, but he finds himself holding his breath when Liam gets up from the couch after he’s done tormenting himself with the map, waiting to see what direction he heads; to the door or the staircase.

Other nights, when Theo is alone in his massive apartment with nothing but the muted sounds of the plumbing, the humming of the fridge and the clicks and moans of the building settling on its foundations, he wakes up gasping, sweating, claws extended and mouth full of fangs as his sister reclaims her heart, or as Tracy paralyzes him so that Josh can send electricity searing through him, over and over again. After the first few nights like that, he learns it’s hopeless to try and go back to sleep—doesn’t want to—and gets up, heads out to the preserve and sheds his clothes, transforms into a wolf and takes off.

He tells himself he’s running patrols, but really he’s just running, and running on instinct; often enough he finds himself loping from pack member house to pack member house, watching and circling until his ears catch Ms. McCall’s steady heartbeat, Mason’s, Liam’s, Corey’s, the Sheriff’s, Parrish’s, until he can fill his lungs with their easy, sleep-warm scents. It doesn’t erase the phantom feeling of his ribs cracking open under his sister’s hands or the betrayed looks in Tracy’s and Josh’s eyes when he’d turned on them, but it lessens them, Theo wrapping his senses in the present—in the sound and smell of the McCall pack, safe and whole _today_ —to help mute the admittedly self-inflicted horrors of the past.

Once he’s done that, he finds he can go home, go back to his apartment, where he sits cross-legged on his unmade bed and watches the sun rise through the loft’s massive windows. He sits and he cradles that ember of feeling that Scott had ignited all those weeks ago, brought out from its home buried deep in the protective cage of his ribs. He never goes back to sleep those nights, but it’s enough.

It’s enough.

\---

One Friday in late October, Theo is standing in the aisle at Raley’s grocery store half an hour before the start of the next lacrosse game, staring at the boxes of instant hot chocolate mix and trying to decide (a) how judgmental a look Ms. McCall will give him if he stops by the liquor store next door and uses his fake ID to buy a bottle of whiskey to spike it with and (b) whether or not the Sheriff will arrest him for it if he does. He’s just made up his mind to risk it—he’s pretty sure he can get Ms. McCall to talk the Sheriff out of the arrest as long as he shares—and is reaching for the box when Jun-hei comes around the corner and spots him. He stops and gets a look on his face that Theo associates most strongly with suburban homemakers when Derek Hale is around and the doctor’s lounge at Beacon Hills Memorial after Ms. McCall has once again proved herself ruthlessly competent: a little predatory; one-hundred percent professional gossip.

Theo raises his eyebrows in Jun-hei’s direction, his hand paused halfway to grabbing the box. Jun-hei grins and hurries over and comes to a stop mere inches from Theo’s shoulder, crowding in close like a man with a secret to tell.

“You’ll never believe who was just in the store,” Jun-hei starts in what he probably thinks is a whisper but is clearly audible to the woman down the aisle buying Goldfish, based on the way she straightens and starts giving the boxes of snack crackers way more attention than they deserve.

“Santa Claus,” Theo deadpans, eyeing her pointedly until she finally grabs a box and starts walking away with a disappointed sigh that, in her defense, she has no way of knowing Theo can hear.

Jun-hei makes a face; he and Theo had bonded over the absurdity of Raley’s putting out their winter holidays section at the beginning of October and he’s obviously still traumatized from having to organize the garish lawn decorations that are always inexplicably popular.

“It was your cousin’s ex, the one who you told me pretty much turned into a no-holds-barred psychopath by the end?” Jun-hei’s eyes are intent on Theo’s face as he says this to see how Theo takes this news.

For his part, Theo just barely manages to keep the shock off his face and gives silent thanks that Jun-hei is human and unable to hear his heart-rate spike; Theo’s nonexistent cousin’s “ex” meant Rossler, one of Monroe’s top lieutenants and one of the hunters who’d nearly killed Liam at the zoo. He’d fed Jun-hei a story over the course of several visits about Rossler, made it just scandalous enough to be intriguing without giving away the true nature of either Rossler’s murderous predilections or Theo’s interest in him. By the end, Jun-hei had been armed with an accurate description of what Rossler looked like and a preconception of him being a gigantic asshole, which pretty much guaranteed that Jun-hei would do exactly what he’s just done if he saw Rossler; find Theo to share the juicy news.

“You’re kidding,” Theo finally says, a half-second late, though luckily Jun-hei seems to attribute this to surprise and maybe a little outrage and not Theo’s mind suddenly switching from Friday-night-lacrosse-spectating to DEFCON One.

Jun-hei shakes his head, keeps going without prompting, “I was restocking in the household items aisle and he came down, picked up jumper cables and some duct tape. He must be having car trouble or something.”

_Or something_ , Theo thinks absently, a little hysterically; Theo highly doubts Rossler plans to use either on a _car_. Jun-hei is looking at him expectantly so Theo forces his head back in the game, away from the mental calculus he’d started performing; what was Rossler doing here, how long had he been back, how had Theo not picked up on his presence earlier?

“My cousin is going to be so pissed,” Theo laments, this time perfectly timed and perfectly acted; disgusted and irritated and, like Jun-hei, a little salaciously interested, “She’d hoped he was gone for good.”

“Maybe it’s only temporary,” Jun-hei shrugs, now looking a little smug at being the one to have this knowledge to impart, “He was talking on the phone when he was picking up his items, he’s staying in that crappy by-the-week motel off the highway.”

All of Theo’s senses go sharp like a hunting dog catching the scent, “Oh? That’s interesting.” He finally finishes reaching forward to grab the box of instant hot chocolate mix and add it to his basket, then continues, “When was this, by the way? My cousin sometimes goes grocery shopping Friday nights after work, maybe I should tell her to wait until tomorrow.”

“An hour or so, I think?” Jun-hei answers, face tilted towards the ceiling as he tries to recall, “Couldn’t have been much more than that, Michael had just gone on break when I went to restock and he always takes his breaks at the same time.”

“Well that’s good then, she’s probably missed him,” Theo replies, mind racing, “Hey, look, I’ve got to run, the game starts soon, but thanks for the heads-up, yeah?”

Jun-hei nods and claps him on the shoulder, “I see him again I’ll make sure to ‘accidentally’ spill something on him.”

Theo smirks, “You’re good people.”

He waves to Jun-hei as he heads for the self-checkout, so very tempted to just abandon his basket and sprint for his truck. But he knows better, no matter what his adrenal gland seems to think; he moves no faster or slower than he would any other time, buys his groceries and takes them out to his truck like a man whose only concern is not missing the start of the game.

Once he gets inside, he throws the bag of groceries onto his passenger seat and takes out his phone, texts Scott, Derek, Malia, and Argent to say _may have found something, going to check it out_. It’s an insurance policy, more than anything, a come-find-my-body-if-you-don’t-hear-from-me-in-an-hour thing; the hunting party was at least two hours away, checking out a rumor from the alpha of the Yreka pack, and would be of little use in running down the lead. Then he texts Ms. McCall and the Sheriff to tell them he’s going to be late, gets back a _???_ from Ms. McCall and a _something I should be worried about?_ from the Sheriff.

_You’ll be the first to know_ , Theo responds and then locks his phone.

He’s started the engine and is just about to reach for the gear-shift when a thought crosses his mind; the hunting party was too far away to be useful and he’d shoot himself with one of Argent’s poisoned bullets before breaking his deal with Scott and asking Liam, Mason, or Corey to help, but going alone would be unforgivably stupid. He leans back, bottom lip between his teeth, and considers, then curses to himself— _stop wasting time_ —and pulls his phone out again, scrolls through his contacts until he finds the one he’s looking for.

To his credit, Parrish answers on the second ring, though Theo is sure he spent a bewildered second staring at Theo’s name on his phone screen, “Theo?”

“I could use some backup, if you’re up for it,” Theo says without preamble, ignoring the mess of feelings in his chest; tension and focus and, buried deep where he could just barely acknowledge it, a little vicious anticipation.

Parrish hesitates only a split second, either because he picks up on something in Theo’s voice or he really is just that much of a boy-scout, “Where? What’s going on?”

Theo gives him a brief explanation and rattles off the address of the shitty motel Jun-hei had overheard Rossler mention. He’s just about to hang up, thoughts already several steps ahead, when Parrish says his name, “What?”

“This backup…” Parrish hesitates and Theo grits his teeth, sure that he’s just imagining being able to hear the seconds tick by on his truck’s dashboard clock, “Are you calling for backup from a deputy or something else?”

Even with the urgency buzzing under his skin, Theo stops and gives Parrish’s question some genuine thought. He thinks about facing down Parrish at Eichen House, the way his skin had started to burn and crack from the heat Parrish had given off when he’d been fully transformed as a hellhound, how absolutely blood-chilling the whole encounter had been even as a chimera capable of bouncing back from grievous bodily harm. Then he thinks about the trail of blood that Gabe had left behind himself at the hospital after Rossler and his other hunter pals had filled him full of holes and then left him to die, more focused on killing Liam and Theo than on their former comrade.

“I don’t know yet,” Theo answers honestly, and then he does hang up.

He parks in a rundown strip mall a few blocks away from the motel, pausing to lean over the back of the truck’s front seat to dig through the duffle bag of supplies he keeps stashed in the back seat; clothes, cash, a few of the more common strands of wolfsbane, a pack of cigarettes, and so on. The cigarettes he pockets along with a lighter and then and hops out of his truck, senses already peeled. The stench of exhaust, trash, and piss fills his nostrils but he forces himself past it, combs through it for the scents that always seem to give away hunters in general and Monroe’s fanatical band in particular; the bite of gunpowder and the sting of wolfsbane. He’s just picked up the barest hint of both and is trying to decide if its connected to the hunters or just a remnant of the shitty neighborhood when Parrish pulls up in an unmarked police car and parks next to Theo’s truck.

He gets out and Theo nods to him in acknowledgement. He doesn’t say _thanks for coming_ , partially because it sounds so trite and partially because he doesn’t think Parrish would appreciate hearing it, but he is thankful; in Parrish’s shoes, Theo’s not sure he would have been so quick to agree.

Parrish closes his door and checks his weapon, then puts it back in its holster underneath a civilian jacket, his uniform left behind. Once he’s satisfied, he jerks a nod and follows Theo as Theo heads for the motel. They move quickly but not _too_ quickly; two people who just want to get out of the cold, maybe. Parrish keeps his hands jammed in his pockets and doesn’t say a word, which Theo appreciates; it lets him put all of his focus into what he’s hearing, smelling, and even more so than if he were alone. The feeling of having someone at his back—of _trusting_ someone to have his back—is alien, but Theo doesn’t let himself think about it, just takes full advantage of not having to keep an eye on his own skin.

The motel when they reach it is sparsely populated, just a handful of the rooms occupied. Theo catches the distinctive whiff of metal and gunpowder and wolfsbane from a corner room on the first floor and finds himself grudgingly impressed; they’d picked a good location, with multiple possible exit routes and good sightlines. He raises a hand in Parrish’s direction, waves it towards a nearby alcove by a darkened vending machine. Parrish, catching on, follows him to it and doesn’t react oddly when Theo pulls out the cigarettes and a lighter, when he lights one with practiced ease, knowing as Theo does maybe that there’s few better excuses to loiter than a smoke.

“Corner room,” Theo tells Parrish quietly once they’re settled, “I can’t hear anyone inside, but give me a minute; I want to make sure there aren’t any other hunters around.”

It’s what he’d do, after all, if he was in Monroe’s position; send someone back to Beacon Hills to get spotted and then lull whoever came to investigate into a false sense of security, make them think they were dealing with one or two opponents and then take them with significantly more. But Theo’s gut says that isn’t what’s happening here, though he methodically searches each room of the motel with ears and nose to be sure; Monroe may have had enough _raw talent_ to attract Gerard, but she was still, at best, an enthusiastic amateur, and she’d trained her people. Neither she nor her lieutenants had any real reason to expect that Theo had sources around town—which, how could they? Theo’s sources didn’t know they were his sources—and giving away the motel’s location in public was either a highly professional move meant to set up a trap or a hugely amateur mistake, and as Theo’s sweep comes up clean, he becomes increasingly convinced it’s the latter.

“No one else I can hear or smell,” Theo says finally.

“Do we think it’s a good thing or a bad thing that they’re not here?” Parrish asks, but it’s rhetorical and they both know it.

Theo smirks absently in response but he’s watching the door out of the corner of his eye, cigarette flaring as he takes a drag, debating with himself; break it open and lose the element of surprise when the hunters return and realize they’ve been made or go con a key out of the motel manager and lose five to ten minutes of maybe desperately needed time depending on what Rossler had planned? Something about what Jun-hei had said— _duct tape and jumper cables_ —has his lizard-brain screeching to move, move, move, but the opportunity is too valuable; if he and Parrish played their hands right, they could observe Rossler and whoever was with him unnoticed, learn exponentially more than they would from the other side of an interrogation room table.

Decision made, Theo drops his half-smoked cigarette and grinds it out with the toe of his shoe, “Give me five, I’m going to go get a key.”

Parrish nods and leans back against the wall, pulling out his phone and immediately looking like any of a hundred bored men waiting for their dates. Theo heads for the motel’s office and finds himself surprised and a little professionally insulted when all he has to do is claim to have lost his key, smile embarrassed and his expression apologetic, hands quickly dipped into his pockets— _see? Empty_ —for the bored attendant to make him a new one to room 108. He takes the card and heads for the room, Parrish joining him silently.

Theo hovers the keycard over the reader and prepares to dip it, “Ready?”

Parrish takes out his weapon and holds it low to his body, hiding it in his profile, “Ready.”

Theo dips the card and opens the door quickly, eyes flared golden to turn the dark room bright. Parrish comes in after him, weapon raised and eyes ringed with fire, and kicks the door shut behind him. The precautions are unnecessary, though; the room is as empty as Theo sensed it was. Parrish holsters his weapon but by unspoken agreement with Theo keeps his eyes flared instead of reaching for the light, neither one of them wanting to give away their presence to anyone looking in the room’s windows.

The room is a controlled mess, supplies spread across various surfaces and the beds unmade, though the scent of their occupants hasn’t yet had time to sink in; the hunters had been around for two days, maybe, three maximum. It nonetheless reeks of gunpowder and gun oil and wolfsbane, a bag of weapons half open on one of the beds and spilling its contents out. Parrish goes to check the bathroom and kitchenette while Theo heads for the desk, attention caught by a cheap fold-out plastic map spread across the surface. He recognizes a handful of _X_ ’s hand-drawn on it instantly—Ms. McCall’s, the Sheriff’s, Derek’s apartment building, and so on—but a few of them he can’t place immediately. Setting them aside for the moment, he studies the rest of the map, trying to discern some pattern or meaning.

A post-it note stuck in the middle catches his attention and he flattens it with a fingertip so he can read it, _BHHS v. Devenford Prep 7:00_. Theo’s gut curdles and he feels his mouth try to fill with fangs; that was tonight’s game. Were they going to try something at the match? He starts searching the drawers and surrounding area with renewed urgency, looking for anything to give him another clue.

He’s just turned his attention back to the map, his search of the desk coming up clean, when he glances back at the post-it and realizes that it’s not just placed randomly on the map; instead of flattening it out he pushes it up, reads the address underneath it. The relevance of it is on the tip of his tongue—it’s not a pack member house, but someone related to it, he just can’t think of _who_ —when Parrish suddenly calls his name from the bathroom. Theo jerks his gaze upward just in time to see Parrish hold something up where he’s framed in the doorway, his fiery eyes narrow; it’s a cheap maroon sports jersey.

It’s a Beacon Hills lacrosse jersey, to be exact, and Theo recognizes the number.

He has his phone out before he’s even fully processed the thought, his free hand motioning to Parrish to come take a look at the map, “Liam?”

Liam must be distracted or Theo doesn’t sound nearly as tense as he feels because Liam just starts rambling after he picks up, saying, “Theo! Are you still at the store? Could you pick me up a Gatorade, I forgot—”

Theo cuts him off, “Shut up and listen to me. Where’s Nolan? I need you to find Nolan and stay with him.”

Liam focuses immediately; Theo can hear him move away from what sounds like the rest of the team, “What’s going on?”

“One of Monroe’s hunters is back in town, Parrish and I found his motel room,” Theo explains impatiently, “We think they’re going to try and grab Nolan at the game, so you need to find him and stay with him.”

There’s a pregnant pause on the line and then Liam speaks again, his voice suddenly bleak, “I can’t.”

Theo freezes. He just stops moving so he can focus entirely on the call, on Liam, “What? What do you mean, ‘you can’t?’”

Liam speaks again, all in a rush, “Nolan isn’t here. He couldn’t find his jersey in his locker, he thought he must have left it at home.”

Theo pales, eyes on Nolan’s jersey still clutched in Parrish’s hand, “Liam, listen to me. Find Ms. McCall and the Sheriff, okay? Find them and Corey and Mason and stay with them, don’t let them out of your sight.”

“Theo—” Liam tries.

“ _Stay with Corey and Mason_ ,” Theo snarls, some small corner of his brain taken aback by the ferocity of his own response, but he doesn’t have time to overthink it; he’s already taken off at a dead-sprint back to his truck, Parrish—who must have heard Liam—hot on his heels.

Theo throws himself into his truck when he reaches it and guns the engine, reverses out of the parking lot with a squeal of rubber. He absently tags Parrish doing the same in his rearview, but he’s too busy cursing himself— _shouldn’t have wasted time calling Parrish, shouldn’t have wasted time getting the key_ —and trying to coax more speed out of his truck to really notice. Nolan’s house is a good twenty minutes away even with Theo breaking several traffic laws and just barely avoiding an accident as he slips through an intersection at the last second of yellow, Parrish following him through smoothly.

There are two hulking black SUVs parked in Nolan’s driveway when Theo and Parrish finally pull up, and Theo jerks his truck into a sickening turn as he arrives, angles it so that he’s blocking them both in. He shuts off the engine and leaves the door open as he sprints towards the house, senses stretched to their limit to try and hear what’s happening inside. He tags Parrish behind him but doesn’t stop to wait, just blows through the front door—the lock already splintered and the door hanging off its hinges—and skids to a stop as Rossler looks up at him in shock from the living room, one of his hands knotted in Nolan’s collar and the other raised to strike him again, Nolan’s face already a bloody mess.

Theo snarls a challenge, eyes flared and mouth full of fangs, fingers clawed. He senses the second hunter—Preston, another of the hunters from the zoo—a beat too late and hears the sound of a weapon cocking, knows an instant before the bullet rips through his shoulder what’s about to happen. He staggers back under the impact but keeps his feet, snarls at Preston as Parrish comes through the door, weapon raised. Parrish is yelling, Theo can hear him— _Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department_ , for all the good that’s going to do anyone—but Theo is focused on Rossler, on where Rossler has hauled Nolan to his feet and is using him as a human shield, a knife that he’d pulled from his waistband now in his hand and held to Nolan’s neck.

“Let him go,” Theo orders him, but Rossler just smiles nastily.

“I don’t think so,” He yanks Nolan harder against him to make Nolan yelp, “You feel the wolfsbane poisoning, yet? We didn’t know if any of you filthy dogs would show, what with Nolan here being one of the primary reasons that mutt and his bitch sister are dead,” This he says to Nolan, spitting it into his ear; Nolan grits his teeth and turns away, but Theo can smell the rush of shame and self-hatred Rossler’s words evoke even under all the blood, “But better safe than sorry, right?”

In fact Rossler’s right and Theo _can_ feel the wolfsbane poisoning, spreading slowly down his chest and arm like ice water in his veins as every beat of his heart pushes it further and further through his bloodstream. There’s a part of him—a part that sounds suspiciously like Liam—that wants to snarl again in the face of the impasse, keep threatening, but Theo doesn’t, knows it won’t do him any good. Instead he forces down his discomfort, his rage, loosens his stance—nearly staggering as he does so, his limbs already going shaky—and spreads his arms to encompass his and Rossler’s current situation; Parrish and Preston in a standoff, Theo clawed and fanged and ready to rip Rossler apart the second he tries to move.

“C’mon, Rossler,” Theo says silkily, coaxing, once he’s managed to relax his posture; back to being the diplomat, the negotiator, the spy, “How do you think this is going to end?” Theo takes a deliberate step forward just to make Rossler snap _get back_ and press the knife harder to Nolan’s throat, make Rossler think he’s won something when Theo does, “It’s just you and Preston, right? Monroe didn’t send you with any backup, told you she wouldn’t be able to send any if you were caught.”

Rossler’s eyes dart to Preston’s and Theo can read the question there clearly; _how the hell does he know that?_ , so Theo twists the proverbial knife a little more.

“Now, me? I’ve got a hellhound,” Theo jerks his head to Parrish, who—and here Theo mentally grins, savagely—does exactly as Theo wanted him to and flares his eyes like hellfire, bares his teeth and raises the temperature of the room a few burning degrees, “And a whole pack of supernaturals on their way just desperate to get their claws in you both.”

“Don’t forget the Sheriff,” Parrish adds pleasantly, like they’re discussing Sunday breakfast plans rather than a potentially bloody showdown, “I know he’s dying to have a few words with them, too.”

Theo smiles slowly, deliberately, golden eyes focused firmly on Rossler’s face as Rossler darts a look at him, “If there’s enough of them left for the Sheriff to question once Malia and Liam are through with them, sure. They’re all his.” Theo agrees easily, watches Rossler struggle not to blanch.

“You’ll be cleaning Nolan’s brains off the wall if so,” Rossler threatens, the hand not holding the knife to Nolan’s neck reaching into his back waistband for a gun. He presses it to Nolan’s temple pointedly, the pressure forcing his neck harder against the knife still held in Rossler’s other hand.

Theo ignores the spike of feeling that jolts through his chest at the way the skin of Nolan’s neck starts to pale at the pressure of the knife and instead shrugs, glances at Parrish like he’s checking to ensure they’re on the same page as he says, “Like you said, Nolan here is the reason Brett and Lori are dead. I think his brains all over the wall is acceptable collateral damage for the chance to have a…” Here he pauses, tips his chin back and forth like he’s trying to come up with the right descriptor, “...conversation with two of Monroe’s top lieutenants.”

For half a second Theo worries that Parrish is going to take him at his word, believe that Theo really is willing to sacrifice Nolan in the interest of getting his hands on Rossler and Preston, but Parrish plays along, just smirks and raises his eyebrows in challenge when Rossler looks at him to gauge his reaction to Theo’s claim. It’s Nolan’s reaction that gets Theo unexpectedly; he tags Nolan’s scent and heart-rate spike—which he expects and plans to apologize for as insincerely as possible once he’s actually saved Nolan’s life—but then both even out and Nolan swallows, closes his eyes and sags some in Rossler’s grip, like he’s accepted his fate; like he thinks he deserves it. Theo stares at his closed eyelids, taken aback, and nearly blows the whole charade as a result.

Luckily Rossler speaks, dragging Theo back to the moment, “I don’t believe you. I saw you at the hospital with that idiot Gabe, and we know that you’ve been trailing after the McCall pack ever since like some starved stray looking for table scraps. McCall would never forgive you.”

That lands, even though Theo knows he has no intention of sacrificing Nolan; there’s a half-panicked part of Theo that has no idea how he’s going to get Nolan free, safe, away from Rossler, and that part had already started spooling out scenario after scenario of how Scott might react if Theo fails and Nolan dies. He flinches before he can help himself and Rossler’s eyes light up in triumph.

“How far you’ve fallen, Theo,” Rossler sneers, pressing his advantage, “From alpha of the chimeras to McCall pack pet.”

Theo snarls instinctively, his aura of nonchalance giving way even as the coolly rational part of his brain despairs the ease with which Rossler managed to get under his skin. Rossler grins nastily and goes to open his mouth again, Nolan still limp as a rag doll in his hands, and then several things happen in quick succession.

The gun and knife in Rossler’s hands get yanked away, clear of Nolan’s neck, Corey appearing all at once as his focus on the weapons causes his camouflage to fade; the look of pure bafflement on Rossler’s face as it happens would be comical at any other time.

Liam, who must have been gripping Corey to share his invisibility, drops Rossler with a clawed swipe to the back of Rossler’s legs, effectively hamstringing him; he rolls out of the way as Rossler collapses with a pained shriek, taking Nolan down with him as he goes.

Parrish, who must recognize the opportunity, shoots Preston once in the shoulder; Preston’s gun falls from his suddenly slack hands as he yells in pain and Parrish moves immediately forward to drop him with a well-placed punch to the temple. Parrish stands over him afterwards, gun trained on his head, but Preston doesn’t move and after a beat Parrish kneels to put him in handcuffs.

And then, finally, Theo—the wolfsbane in his system apparently reaching a vital organ or two—hits the floor as his knees give out from under him.

He hears Liam yell his name but is too focused on trying to roll over, get his knees back underneath him so he can stand, focus still firmly on Rossler; on Rossler still so near to Nolan and Liam. It’s unnecessary, though; in the next second the Sheriff comes through the ruined front door, gun trained on Rossler where Rossler is writhing on the ground. The Sheriff nods to Corey—still holding both of Rossler’s weapons from where he’d yanked them away, a vaguely shell-shocked expression on his face—and kneels down to drag Rossler a few feet away from Nolan, force Rossler over onto his stomach to get a pair of handcuffs on him.

Theo has just enough time left to see Ms. McCall and Mason follow the Sheriff inside—the humans apparently having waited outside until the danger of grievous bodily harm by people who couldn’t just shrug it off was much lowered—with Ms. McCall heading straight for Nolan, before his limbs collapse out from under him and he hits the ground again. He turns his face at the last moment and manages to avoid the indignity of a broken nose, but he knows instantly there’s no way he’s getting up again.

He feels hands on him in the next instant, helping him turn over. Liam blanches when he sees the bullet wound on Theo’s shoulder, undoubtedly blackened and raw, and then flutters his hands over Theo’s body like he’s looking for a safe place to put them.

“Wolfsbane in the bullet,” Theo hears Parrish explain; Liam swears.

“Theo keeps wolfsbane in his truck for emergencies,” Corey offers into the following grim silence; the Sheriff orders him to go get it.

Theo is starting to fade in and out as Corey’s footsteps go by as he does as he’s told, but he hears the Sheriff say that he’s called for ambulances, tags it as he radios in Rossler’s and Preston’s captures: both of them wanted for murder, supernatural elements of those crimes aside. Rossler is snarling and swearing, but must not be in any great danger from Liam’s attack; Ms. McCall tells the Sheriff to put pressure on the wounds but doesn’t sound overly concerned.

_Though_ , Theo thinks giddily, his head and senses swimming, _that could just be the circumstances._

Liam glances at his face from where he’d been laser-focused on the bullet wound in his shoulder when Theo thinks this, like Theo’s scent or heartbeat has just given something away. He presses one hand to Theo’s uninjured shoulder and the other to his forehead, face a sympathetic grimace as he meets Theo’s eyes, as they stare at each other. The moment only lasts a handful of seconds, Liam’s head jerking up as Ms. McCall calls his name.

“Get over here,” She orders.

Liam hesitates, his hands spasming where they’re still resting against Theo’s skin. Theo tries to tell him it’s okay but can’t, his jaw locked around the pained noises he’s trying not to let past his teeth.

“ _Liam_ ,” Ms. McCall snaps, “Theo will be fine. Nolan, on the other hand, is going to go into shock and die if you don’t get over here and take some of his pain.”

This time Liam does blanch, scrambling to his feet with a last look down at Theo. Theo nods to him, jaw still clamped shut, and tilts his head back to the extent he can, trying to see Nolan, see Liam when he gets to Nolan’s side and kneels down. Ms. McCall is across from him, holding some balled up fabric against the side of Nolan’s neck, and Theo realizes what must have happened; the knife must have cut flesh as Corey yanked it away.

“The wound isn’t deep,” Ms. McCall is saying, possibly to Liam but more likely to Corey, who comes back through the front door smelling like guilt and determination, “But in combination with the beating he took and the trauma of the experience, he’s on the verge of going into shock, do you understand?”

Liam nods, takes hold of one of Nolan’s wrists and gently pushes his sleeve up and out of the way until Liam can grip bare skin. Theo can see the black veins start flowing up Liam’s arms almost immediately, sees Liam’s eyes close as he takes a deep breath as his body absorbs the pain. Ms. McCall nods to herself and looks back down at Nolan, apparently satisfied, and Theo looks back down at his own body as Corey drops to his knees next to him, the bag from Theo’s car in his hands.

“Which vial?” Corey asks, already digging through its contents.

Theo had shown him the various vials of wolfsbane approximately another lifetime ago when Theo had still been playacting at being an alpha, had made Corey and the other chimeras practice identifying the different types of wolfsbane by sight until they could do it effortlessly.

“Western monkshood,” Theo tells him through gritted teeth; he’d recognized the distinctive smell when Preston had shot him.

Corey nods and grabs the appropriate vial filled with tiny purple flowers, and even though his eyes keep darting to Ms. McCall putting pressure on the knife wound on Nolan’s neck, his fingers are steady as he pulls them out.

“Lighter in my pocket,” Theo tells him, dropping his gaze back to the ceiling and away from the tableau Liam and Nolan make as he tries to focus on breathing in and out, which is becoming harder and harder as the seconds drag by.

He feels Corey root around in his pockets and then the slight tug as he frees the lighter. The _snick_ it makes as Corey lights it and touches the flame to the flowers in his palm sounds thunderous in Theo’s ears, but the world almost immediately disappears in a muted roar when Corey tips the plant’s ashes into the bullet wound on his shoulder and then digs his thumb in afterwards, making sure the ashes actually enter his bloodstream.

Theo comes back to himself only briefly, but as he feels his consciousness start to fade, he manages to tip his head back once more to look at Nolan, to look at Nolan and Liam. His vision is swimming, but Theo thinks he sees Nolan clench a shaking hand on Liam’s knee where Liam is half-crouched over him, hears Nolan mumble, _I’m sorry_.

“Shut up, Nolan,” Liam whispers fiercely and Theo stirs some, Liam’s distress automatically pulling at him.

But it doesn’t take; Theo can feel himself passing out and gives into it all at once, exhausted, still hearing Nolan’s pained, continuous, drunken whisper as he goes.

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

\---

Theo wakes up an indeterminate amount of time later and recognizes the smell of the animal clinic before he’s even opened his eyes.

He still feels like shit, but the burning pain of the wolfsbane poisoning—and the infinitely more terrifying numbness that had followed it—is gone. Now he just feels like he’s maybe spent the last few hours locked in an industrial tumble dryer with an assortment of bricks. He groans before he can help himself and goes to roll over, off his back and off the metal table, but is pushed back flat seconds later with embarrassing ease.

“I wouldn’t,” Theo hears Deaton say, voice as irritatingly level as ever; Theo still has his eyes closed so he can’t see Deaton’s expression, but he’s willing to bet it’s just as irritatingly placid as ever, as well, “The wolfsbane was in your system long enough to start causing cellular death in your heart and left lung. I highly doubt you’re fully healed yet.”

To his credit, Deaton doesn’t leave him like that; Theo feels something cool and hard press against his hand and closes his fingers around it automatically, taking hold of the phone Deaton is handing him.

“That’s been buzzing incessantly since Mason and Corey brought you by,” Deaton tells him.

Theo tracks him auditorily—eyes still firmly closed since he’s so far failed to convince himself to open them—as Deaton takes a few steps away and then settles onto his padded stool with a muted squeak, having apparently done all he could or was going to do for Theo. It’s almost definitely psychosomatic, but now that Deaton has put a name to what’s happening in his chest, Theo feels like he can almost track his body’s progress as it heals his heart and lung one cell at a time; it’s not a comfortable feeling. Gritting his teeth, Theo brings his phone up to his face and forces himself to crack open his eyes, squint at the screen. Deaton must not have been exaggerating about the incessant buzzing; the screen is full of notifications.

“You said Mason and Corey brought me by? Why here?” Theo asks as he starts scrolling back through the myriad messages sent on the pack’s group text while he was out, looking for the beginning of the night.

Deaton doesn’t look up at him from where he’s bent over some paperwork but he does wiggle the fingers of one hand in his direction, presumably to indicate _claws_ , “The wolfsbane was keeping you from transforming back. The official explanation of what happened was already going to be complicated enough without adding that particular element to the hospital intake form.”

Theo grunts out an acknowledgement, attention back on his phone; that made sense. He finally finds the first message in the thread relevant to the incident at Nolan’s, which just so happens to be Liam asking _what the hell is going on with Theo, there are hunters going after Nolan?!_ , and just devolves into complete chaos from there.

Reading back through the exchange, Theo is impressed that the pack managed to piece together a fairly complete version of events, Liam and Scott and the Sheriff all chiming in with what they knew and everyone going from there. A number of pack members had several choice things to say about Theo’s apparent decision to stumble onto Rossler’s plan solo, alleviated only slightly by Liam remembering that Theo had mentioned being with Parrish. Some of the directionless panic gets cut off when the Sheriff had cut in to inform Scott and the others that he, Ms. McCall, Liam, Mason, and Corey were on their way to Nolan’s. Scott had followed up quickly by saying the hunting party was burning hard for Beacon Hills.

There’s a gap in the messages—to any relevant extent, anyway; Stiles had spent a few minutes sending increasingly long lines of question marks until Derek had told him to knock it off—that Theo places as the time period that must have encompassed his and Parrish’s standoff with Rossler and Preston and then the ensuing chaos after Corey and Liam appeared. The texts start up again soon after, Mason filling everyone in on how the situation ended as, presumably, one of the only people at Nolan’s still conscious and with unoccupied hands. Mason had explained—to the hunting party, Theo supposes—the various parties as they broke off: Ms. McCall, Liam, Nolan, the Sheriff, Rossler, and Preston to the hospital for treatment and—where relevant—arrest; Mason and Corey to the animal clinic to drop off Theo and his truck, care of Dr. Deaton, then taking Ms. McCall’s sedan to the hospital to meet up with the others.

Theo scrolls through the rest of the messages quickly: Scott and the hunting party arriving at the hospital, rampant speculation about whether Monroe would try to either rescue her people and/or finish Nolan off, ultimately culminating in a decision to leave Scott, Malia, Liam, and Corey at the hospital with Ms. McCall, the Sheriff, and Mason; Derek and Argent heading to Rossler’s motel room with Parrish to search for more information; questions about Nolan’s status and replies from Ms. McCall that he’d be fine, no lasting harm.

He pauses at the last text in the thread, a photo from Ms. McCall sent less than fifteen minutes ago; it shows Liam, Mason, and Corey, all technically sitting up but all fast asleep leaning against each other on what looks like a hospital cot. Theo finds himself smiling at it and then grimaces at his own dopey reaction; he saves the photo to his phone before he can think about it too hard and closes the messages app.

He’s about to lock his phone and sit up, start planning his next move—back to Rossler’s motel room, probably; he needs another look around now that the immediate danger has passed—when he realizes that he has a dozen more messages, separate and apart from the group text. He stares at the little red notification bubble for a beat and then taps back into his texts, wary.

The first one he sees is from Scott. When he opens it, there’s a sizable chunk of text detailing the various statuses of the pack members, Rossler and Preston, Nolan, a description of the various groups and where they had headed, and why. It’s a status report, essentially; a condensed and much more immediately useful distillation of what Theo had gleaned from the group text. It’s exactly what Theo would have wanted if he’d had the presence of mind to think about it, and Theo doesn’t know what to do with the fact that Scott both apparently realized that and acted on it.

He doesn’t know what to with it, so he sets it aside, keeps reading, and is almost immediately gut-punched with feeling again: Scott, an hour after giving Theo the status report, finally having a chance to sit down and reflect, maybe, adding simply _thank you_.

Theo backs out of the text thread so quickly he ends up canceling out of the app altogether, has to stop and reopen it. He ignores Scott’s thread and thumbs through some of the others instead, various pack members asking if he’s awake, how he’s feeling. Corey has, in addition to asking after his health, sent him a series of emojis—a purple flower, a flame, and a fist-bump, which Theo can’t help but laugh quietly at—while Stiles has put himself, Theo, and Derek on a thread with a single message: _but did you ask anyone to cut off your arm?_ Recognizing his role as merely a prop in that conversation, Theo wisely chooses not to respond.

He replies back to the others as he goes with short notes— _awake, fine_ —but pauses when he gets to a text from the Sheriff, directly to Theo and with no other pack members included.

_Next time, I had better *actually* be the first to know._

Theo swallows, remembering his off-hand reply back to the Sheriff at the beginning of the night. He thinks about defending his honor, saying _I brought Parrish_ , but in the end he doesn’t. Instead, after a few long seconds of indecision, he texts back _yes sir_ and leaves it at that. Then he really does lock his phone and sit up, his chest still feeling tight and uncomfortable but ultimately bearable.

Deaton looks up at him, expression as infuriatingly unreadable as ever, “I wish I could say I was surprised that you’re the type of patient who ignores the advice of their doctor.”

“Good thing you’re a vet, then,” Theo responds blandly and slides off the table, staggering only a little when his feet hit the floor.

Deaton gives him a dry look and snags something off the counter next to him and holds it out. Theo takes what turns out to be his keys and is turning on his heel to head towards the door when Deaton speaks again, “Whatever it is Monroe is planning, questioning Nolan was only a first step.”

Theo snorts and doesn’t bother to turn around, just says, “Thanks for the tip, Nostradamus.”

He can almost feel Deaton’s unimpressed look between his shoulder blades, but that’s what Deaton gets for being mysterious and cryptic without actually being _helpful_. Theo leaves him there with his paperwork, heads out the open mountain ash gate—closing it wouldn’t have kept Monroe or her hunters out, and it _would_ have kept the majority of the pack from getting in—and gets in his truck. He’s panting a little by the time he pulls the door shut behind him, has to lean over and rest his forehead on the steering wheel for a few long moments before he can sit up again, start the engine.

When he gets back to the motel, the Sheriff has clearly chosen to treat the attack on Nolan like a traditional crime; the motel parking lot is filled with police cars, lights flashing. Theo parks across the street—the need for subtlety gone—and gets out, tagging Argent’s hulking black SUV and Parrish’s unmarked cruiser in the parking lot among the police vehicles. There’s a square of space marked off with caution tape around room 108 and two uniformed officers standing guard, but Parrish—likely alerted either by his own senses or Derek—pokes his head out of the room and tells them to let Theo through.

Theo goes, wrapping his left arm around his chest as he ducks under the tape one of the officers lifts for him. Deaton had definitely been right, and Theo definitely isn’t fully healed yet; up and moving, Theo’s left side feels like it’s on fire. Derek clearly realizes this when he looks up at Theo as he comes through the door, but to Theo’s everlasting gratitude he doesn’t say anything, just jerks a nod in acknowledgement.

Parrish, on the other hand, looks an odd mixture of relieved and sympathetic when Theo glances at him, “Hey, Theo. Good to see you up.”

Theo stares at him a moment, confused at the depth of his concern, and then realizes what the look means, “I was actually that close to death?”

Parrish makes a face, but Derek is the one who ends up responding, “Lydia called me just before Liam texted. She says you owe her another shopping trip when she’s home next; apparently she had to pretend she’d seen a snake in the Physics building to explain why she’d screamed.”

“Fantastic,” Theo mutters under his breath, coming forward to stand next to Derek near the bed, Argent and Parrish on the other side, the cheap fold-out map that had originally caught Theo’s attention several hours ago spread out on the comforter between them.

They spend the next few hours pouring over the map, arguing over the significance or insignificance of various marks. Argent goes outside to his Mary Poppins vehicle—the larger cousin of his bottomless duffle bag—and comes back in with an exact replica of the map, starts copying the marks over since the original would have to be stored as evidence at the station. Theo and Derek leave Parrish and Argent to the map at one point to start examining the clothes and weapons scattered around, less interested in the contents themselves than their scents, looking for hints as to where Rossler and Preston had been before coming back to Beacon Hills.

Eventually Derek gets fed up with Theo’s hunched posture and shortness of breath and drags the desk chair over to the bed, presses Theo down into it and takes his pain while he, Argent, Parrish, and Theo hypothesize back and forth. They all agree that Monroe likely targeted Nolan for questioning in an attempt to gain some insight into the McCall pack—Rossler’s impulse control problems that had led to him kicking the shit out of Nolan first aside—but there are too many unanswered questions to figure out much more than that.

“Alright, that’s enough for tonight,” Parrish finally says, rubbing the heels of his palms roughly over his face, “We’re going in circles, now.”

Argent agrees, still looking irritatingly fresh as he reaches for the replica map and starts folding it up, “We’ll add this information and the list of places that Theo and Derek were able to detect to the map at Theo’s tomorrow, see what we can find.”

He continues talking to Parrish, but Theo loses track of the words; Parrish may have said _tonight_ , but _this morning_ would have been more accurate. It’s nearing three o’clock in the morning, and while the pain of healing has mostly faded, Theo’s body now instead feels almost too light, like gravity is losing its hold on him.

He’s broken out of his exhausted fugue when Derek appears in his line of vision. He’s saying something, Theo can see his lips moving, but he misses whatever it is. Derek clearly realizes this and rolls his eyes, holds out a hand and motions impatiently when Theo just stares at him dumbly.

“Give me your hand, Theo, and then your keys,” Derek repeats slowly, “I’ll drive us to the hospital.” He pauses and raises an eyebrow at whatever Theo’s expression—or scent, or heartbeat—is doing, “Or would you like to pretend that you’re going to be able to sleep before you check on Nolan and the hunters?”

Theo grimaces at him, thinking _low blow_ , but Derek’s not wrong; even in the midst of fantasizing about his bed and wondering if he had any chance at all of making it there without crashing his truck, a part of him had known his first stop would be the hospital, inability to focus notwithstanding. He arches on the chair a bit until he can get his hand in his pocket, get his keys out. Then he reaches up and grabs Derek’s forearm, lets Derek haul him up and steady him once he’s on his feet, take the keys.

Argent is already outside when Derek and Theo step out of the room, Parrish following them and then sealing the door with more crime scene tape. Theo doesn’t realize he’s starting to sway on his feet until Derek reaches over and clamps a hand on his shoulder to steady him, leaves it there like he has absolutely zero faith in Theo’s current ability to stand without help.

Argent eyes them both, “Using you as the gauge, I’m going to say tomorrow afternoon at the earliest for the meeting.”

Derek answers without even glancing at Theo to check his feelings on the pack invading his apartment for the aforementioned meeting, which might be what Theo gets for being the one with the giant wall map of actionable intelligence, “Two p.m. I’ll confirm with Scott when I see him, but that should give everyone enough time.”

Argent nods and heads for his hulking black SUV without another word. Parrish at least stops and says goodnight, expresses again his happiness at seeing Theo standing—if assisted—and not dead, hellhound and banshee predictions aside. After Parrish heads for his unmarked cruiser, Derek hooks a hand around the back of Theo’s left bicep and starts hauling him towards Theo’s truck; Theo would protest the treatment except he is one hundred percent certain that if Derek let go of him he’d hit the asphalt.

Derek doesn’t bother escorting him to the passenger side, just yanks open the driver’s side door and waits as Theo climbs laboriously in, scoots over. Once Theo is more or less settled he hops into the driver’s seat, closes the door but doesn’t start the engine right away, instead starting to search through the truck cab’s contents; glove compartment, center console, the backseat.

“Something I can help you with?” Theo asks him. He means it to sound sarcastic, but he misses by about a mile and instead just sounds drained.

“You’re too smart not to have food in here,” Derek answers, but it’s nearly rhetorical; either his nose or the process of elimination has led Derek to Theo’s bag in the backseat, and he pulls it up and over the front seat until it's sitting between them.

He digs through it until he finds a handful of protein bars and a bottle of water. These, he shoves into Theo’s hands.

“Eat all of those and drink all of that,” He orders, and then he turns back to the road and starts the engine, heads straight and then hangs an immediate left to start taking them to the hospital.

“Melissa does the pack mothering thing so much better than you,” Theo comments, but he does as he’s told and kicks himself a little besides; if he’d been thinking clearly at all, he would have eaten the bars on the way over, maybe could have avoided being such a hot mess for the last few hours.

“Yeah?” Derek snorts absently, “How do I stack up against you?”

Theo gives him a strange look but Derek isn’t paying him any attention, at least not initially; when he realizes that Theo has paused in eating he turns to glare until Theo rips open another protein bar and takes a bite, then opens his mouth to show Derek, obnoxiousness his only refuge. Derek rolls his eyes but turns back to the road. The rest of the ride passes in relative silence until Theo finally remembers his phone in his pocket, which he’d been ignoring throughout his time at the motel—partly because he still wasn’t sure what to do with the mass of messages he’d woken up to and partly because he’d been fairly certain Argent would have stabbed him with something if he’d pulled it out in the middle of their CSI: Beacon Hills session.

He does now, though. There’s a note from Derek on the group text, giving Scott and the others a heads-up that he and Theo were headed to the hospital, but there’s also one from Lydia. Theo’s heartbeat jumps when he sees it and Derek looks over at him for a second, but turns back to the road when he spots the phone in his hand.

A little wary, Theo thumbs open the text and then has to swallow down the sudden tightness in his throat. It’s just one word— _asshole_ —but somehow Theo knows it isn’t malicious. He hesitates for a handful of seconds and then he writes back his own one-word missive— _sorry_ —not quite sure exactly what he’s sorry for, but sorry for it all the same.

He falls asleep for the rest of the ride, protein bars and water helping to take the edge off of the exhaustion pulling at him but not enough to erase it. What Theo really needs, like every other member of the McCall pack almost undoubtedly does, is a good, uninterrupted night’s sleep, but the chances of any of them getting it tonight were slim to nil; even more so than Theo, not a one of them would be able to convince themselves to leave Nolan or the hunters unguarded.

Derek wakes him up when they arrive and doesn’t bother to reprise his role as irritated caretaker, likely concluding—correctly—that the protein bars and water had reset Theo’s imminent-collapse clock back a few hours. Theo follows him into the hospital, where they almost immediately run into Ms. McCall at the nursing station. She’s dressed in scrubs, now, instead of the jeans and sweatshirt she’d been wearing earlier, and when she sees them walk in she grins, comes out from behind the desk.

“Good, you’re back. Derek, Noah wanted to talk to you; he’s still upstairs outside the hunters’ room with the other deputies,” Her scent goes a little hot when she says _hunters_ , clearly still angry.

Derek nods and heads for the stairs—he refuses to take the elevator in the hospital, for reasons that everyone completely understands—and leaves Theo alone with Ms. McCall, who comes to a stop a few feet from him and looks him up and down critically.

“You scared the hell out of all of us,” She finally says, voice carefully neutral; Theo flinches and looks away.

“The Sheriff already said something,” Theo tells the section of floor just past her shoulder, “I’m sorry, next time I’ll keep everyone more in the loop.”

Ms. McCall’s scent changes slightly and Theo looks up, catches her furrowed brow and confused expression, though it clears quickly, “Oh, you mean your completely inadequate text at the beginning of the night. Okay, good, you should definitely not do that again, but I meant the wolfsbane poisoning.”

Now Theo’s the one confused, “It wasn’t like that was unexpected, given the circumstances. Besides, you were the one who told Liam I’d be fine.”

She snorts, “Yeah, because the poor kid looked like he was going to start hyperventilating once he got a look at your shoulder. Which was _nasty_ , by the way. Deaton told Corey and Mason that a few more minutes without those ashes and it would have been even odds whether your body would have been able to heal the damage.”

Theo, who had gotten some sense of exactly how badly he’d been hurt thanks to both Parrish and Lydia’s reactions, still finds himself a little taken aback, “Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh,’” Ms. McCall echoes, and it’s a little mocking, but like Lydia’s text there’s nothing malicious about it, “So don’t do that again, okay?”

She reaches up and taps the back of one knuckle against his forehead like punctuation, then drops her hand against his shoulder, right over where the festering bullet wound had been, pats it once. Theo can’t help his quiet laugh, his soft smile, at the gesture; the ember in his chest flaring to life, a little.

“Okay,” He agrees, aware of the absurdity of making such a claim—it’s why he’s _here_ , after all, the deal he’d made with Scott—but feeling compelled to make it anyway.

Ms. McCall nods like she’s satisfied and turns back towards the nursing station, talking as she goes, “Nolan is up on the third floor. I pulled a cot into the room for Liam, Mason, and Corey, so they’re probably still there. Rossler and Preston are on the fifth, room 502.”

Theo thanks her and then also heads for the stairs, and for similar reasons; to Derek the elevator is a reminder of Jennifer, and to Theo, it’s a reminder of how it’d felt to watch the numbers slowly climb the night of the showdown with Monroe, wondering what would happen, what’d he do, if the doors opened on Liam’s corpse.

He heads to the fifth floor first, identifies room 502 not by number but by the ring of deputies surrounding it. The Sheriff spots him coming and breaks off his conversation with Derek, motions Theo over. Theo goes, eyeing the deputies warily—he recognizes one of them from the shitshow that had been the police station standoff with the two omega werewolves—but they let him pass without incident.

“Theo,” The Sheriff greets.

He jerks his head towards the room and Theo hesitates for a moment, then takes him up on his offer—order?—and steps inside. The Sheriff follows him in and then closes the door, leaving Derek and the deputies outside. Theo has some idea what’s coming but the Sheriff doesn’t jump straight into his interrogation, lets Theo stand stock still for a few moments and stare at Rossler and Preston, both sedated and handcuffed at both wrists to their hospital beds. They smell like antiseptic and the scent particular to healing bodies but otherwise seem fine, and Theo finds his claws starting to lengthen, his upper lip starting to curl back from his teeth; he doubts Nolan looks half as well.

“Theo,” The Sheriff says again, this time half a warning.

Theo snaps out of it with a jerk, shakes his head, retracts his claws. He takes a step back from Rossler’s and Preston’s bed, pivots slightly so that he’s facing the Sheriff more head-on but can still see them out of the corner of his eye.

“Agent McCall is coming up in the morning to take them into custody, transfer them to federal lock-up in San Diego,” The Sheriff tells him, “The FBI pulled evidence from Tierney and Jiang’s murder site that they connect them both to.”

Theo nods to show he’s understood, but he knows that the Sheriff didn’t bring him in here just to give him a chance to see Rossler or Preston rendered powerless or to give him an update on what would be done with them, so he waits. The Sheriff sighs after a moment and rubs a hand over his head, and Theo tags the movement, finds himself thinking _did he get that from Stiles or Stiles from him?_ It’s a distraction, mainly, and it doesn’t last.

“Rossler and Preston got into town two days ago, from what we can tell. They got the room under a fake name and paid for everything in cash. Their plan was pretty sound, if you think about it. They waited until Scott and the others had left, picked a lacrosse game night so that the rest of us would be distracted. Hell, even Nolan’s parents were out of town visiting family. It should have worked.”

_Here it comes_ , Theo thinks, and the Sheriff doesn’t disappoint.

“Nolan would be dead if it wasn’t for you, Theo,” The Sheriff concludes bluntly, and Theo jerks to look at him, surprised. He’d expected a demand for an explanation as to how Theo had known what they were planning, and instead it looks like the Sheriff really did bring him in to see Rossler and Preston rendered harmless after all, “Scott made a good call when he asked you to stay.”

And then he claps Theo on the shoulder, shakes him back and forth a bit, Theo too thrown by the last thirty seconds to do more than sway with the movement.

“But I swear to god, kid, you ever leave me out of the loop like that again and I’ll do something suitably drastic,” He pauses, looks thoughtful, “It will involve Stiles, somehow.” Then his gaze sharpens, “Is that understood?”

Theo nods dumbly and the Sheriff pats him one last time, then shoves him gently towards the door.

“Go see Nolan and the others and then have Melissa find you somewhere to sleep. Supernatural healing or not, that shoulder of yours looked brutal.”

Theo goes, stepping past Derek—who watches him silently—and the deputies, hearing the Sheriff and Derek pick up their conversation as he opens the door to the stairwell. He’s still reeling a bit from his brief interaction with the Sheriff when he reaches the third floor and steps out, finds Nolan’s room by scent. He doesn’t need to strain to pull apart the various smells because it smells like _pack_ , and Theo finds his head clearing some, the unconscious, protective hunch he’d assumed over his left side straightening as the scent of it settles something in his chest.

When he gets to the door the first thing he sees is Mason and Corey, still sound asleep and both of them at some point having slumped over so that they’re now mostly horizontal on the cot Ms. McCall had mentioned. Across from them, Scott and Malia are curled up in the room’s single armchair, breathing deep and even. Theo doesn’t see Liam but can smell him somewhere nearby, so he sets aside his absence for the moment and steps into the room, moves forward on silent feet until he’s standing by Nolan’s bedside.

Nolan’s face looks awful, swollen and bruised and with a few shallow cuts scattered around where Rossler’s knuckles must have split open his skin. One of his fingers is splinted, and though Theo can see his chest rising and falling regularly, every now and then his breath hitches like his undoubtedly bruised—or broken—ribs are protesting.

But it’s the bandage on his neck that catches Theo’s attention, wide and reaching from his right collarbone up under his jaw. Theo doesn’t blame Corey for the wound; he’d had no idea how he was going to get Rossler to release Nolan back at the house, and with his new knowledge of how close he’d been to dying from Preston’s poisoned bullet, he probably wouldn’t have been able to think of anything before he collapsed. Still, he reaches forward and touches feather-light fingertips over the bandage, then shifts until he’s got a palm against an unbruised section of Nolan’s shoulder; Nolan is clearly on the good stuff, but Theo takes his remaining pain anyway, drops his hand when he can’t feel any more, when he can see Nolan’s hitching breaths evening out.

When he glances up Liam is watching him from the doorway, expression unreadable. He sees Theo looking and his jaw works, fingers flexing where he has them crossed over his chest, and Theo—who’d spent a few endless days learning to be an expert on recognizing the signs of Liam getting angry—sighs. Liam catches the movement and his nostrils flare, and then he jerks his head towards the hallway, waits until Theo starts walking towards him to step out.

But he doesn’t stop once he’s outside, instead leading Theo down the hallway to a small alcove filled with the muted glow of vending machines. He stays facing the wall for a few seconds, Theo watching his shoulders rise and fall silently, until he suddenly reels around to shove Theo, who counter-grabs him instinctively. What it means is that when Theo staggers back a step he pulls Liam with him, nearly into him. Liam doesn’t bother moving back when they steady, just stays up in Theo’s space, clearly pissed.

“What the hell were you thinking?” He hisses, the hands he’d used to shove Theo now curling in his shirt; he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t give a damn about Theo’s hands gripping the fabric by his elbows.

Theo, who’d been the person to point out to Liam that Liam only gets angry when he’s afraid, nonetheless feels his temper flare, “I didn’t exactly have time to call a confab.”

“Oh, screw you,” Liam snaps, shoving him again, which rocks them both back another step since Theo is still holding on to him, “You had time to call Parrish.”

“Would you have rathered I didn’t?” Theo returns waspishly, bracing himself and using his grips as leverage points when Liam tries to shove him again, doesn’t let him succeed.

“No,” Liam all but shouts, “I would have rathered you called _me_.” Theo is about to respond, say _I did call you_ , even though he knows that isn’t what Liam means, but Liam speaks again, lowering his voice so it’s more of a snarled whisper, “Jesus, Theo, do you have any what it was like when you just collapsed like that? You smelled like death.”

His voice cracks on the last word and that’s it, that’s the last of Theo’s will to fight right there. Liam opens up his hands so that his palms are resting on Theo’s chest instead, drops his head down between his raised arms so that Theo can no longer see his face. Theo can hear his heartbeat, though; the too-fast _ba-dum_ seems to fill the tiny space they’re in. Before he can say anything Liam raises his head and steps back, Theo’s grips on him falling away as he lets him go.

“Let me see it,” Liam demands.

“Liam,” Theo tries, but Liam just moves like he’s going to forcibly strip Theo’s shirt off of him, so Theo cuts his losses, bats Liam’s hands away and pulls his left arm out of his sleeve so he can pull his shirt up and out of the way, give Liam an unobstructed view of the once-more smooth skin of shoulder.

It’s not enough for Liam, apparently; he reaches forward again and this time puts his fingers on Theo’s skin, right where it had been cratered open and blackened from the poisoned bullet.

Theo shivers at the touch and Liam freezes, darting a look up at his face, “You’re still in pain?”

“No,” Theo says shortly. Liam gives him a skeptical look but Theo isn’t lying; he didn’t shiver because Liam’s touch _hurt_. Reaching for a distraction, Theo steps back out of reach and pulls his shirt back on, adds, “And by the way, if anyone should be pissed it’s me—I _told_ _you_ to stay at the school.”

“No you didn’t,” Liam disagrees absently, his gaze back and laser-focused on Theo’s shoulder, like if he concentrates hard enough he’ll be able to see skin through his shirt, “You told me to stay with Corey and Mason, which I _did_.”

He doesn’t mention that if he hadn’t shown up with Corey and Mason, the Sheriff and Ms. McCall in tow, Theo would likely be dead, so Theo doesn’t mention that Liam had definitely known what Theo had meant, which had indeed been _stay at the school_. Now that Liam had seemingly had the chance to yell for thirty seconds at Theo and then see for himself that Theo is—relatively—unharmed, the anger has completely disappeared from his scent, replaced by a tangled mess of other emotions that Theo doesn’t have a prayer of sorting out in his current state.

Liam steps forward again and Theo has to stop himself from stepping back instinctually, then _really_ has to stop himself from stepping back or knocking his arm away when Liam reaches forward and presses his palm _hard_ against Theo’s healed shoulder. Liam clenches his hand, wrinkling the fabric under his fist, and stares at the back of his grip. Theo stays stock-still and watches his expression, fascinated and completely clueless as to how to react.

Finally, after a few long, syrupy minutes that Theo spends talking himself into and out of several responses—and after which he’s no closer to deciding what to do—Liam drops his hand and steps back. This time, Theo has to stop himself from stepping _forward_ , following the warmth of Liam’s touch.

“The room next to Nolan’s is empty, Ms. McCall set up another cot in there,” Liam says finally, like the last five minutes were a common occurrence between them.

He doesn’t wait for Theo to respond, either uncaring of whether Theo would follow him or confident that he would. The latter wouldn’t be unwarranted; Theo trails after him after a beat to the room he’d mentioned and steps inside, protests only feebly when Liam pushes him towards the bed. His brief fight with Liam had drained the last of whatever the protein bars had given him and Theo wobbles a bit as he reaches the bed, as he manages to get himself inside it with minimal embarrassment; he can feel Liam watching him from the cot, his gaze burning between Theo’s shoulder blades as Theo finally collapses flat with a breathy groan.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, his last memory of listening to Liam get settled on the cot. But he does wake up once, some time later, to Liam shoving at his shoulder and ordering him to move over. Liam smells like sweat, like nightmare-fear, and Theo scoots over without thought, doesn’t say a word when Liam climbs in next to him and curls up against Theo’s side, just slides one hand over the sheets until he’s gripping one of Liam’s forearms.

He falls back asleep with Liam’s pulse under his fingertips; with Liam’s other hand coming to clench firmly, heavily in the fabric covering Theo’s healed shoulder.


	2. Chapter 2

So after all of that, Nolan essentially becomes part of the McCall pack.

Nolan’s parents arrive at the hospital the morning after the attack—having driven all night to get there from a visit to his aunt’s—to the McCall pack spread around and inside Nolan’s room, which seems to baffle them. But the Sheriff distracts them quickly enough, pulling them aside to explain _botched burglary gone wrong_ and the unfortunate coincidence of Nolan having forgotten his jersey at home. They swallow the tale whole, which isn’t unexpected; it’s a perfectly reasonable explanation and the Sheriff is, at this point, a master at wrapping the supernatural in the mundane.

Bad as he’d looked, Nolan is allowed to go home that afternoon, since there isn’t much the hospital can do for him besides keep him drugged; the damage from the beating was going to have to heal on its own. Scott, who had introduced himself as _an old friend of Nolan’s from school_ , manages to puppy-dog eye his way into Nolan’s parents letting Liam and Corey go home with them, and then spends the next fifteen minutes working out a watch schedule with the rest of the pack via the group text. If Nolan’s parents find it strange that Nolan suddenly has an incredibly devoted circle of friends that they’ve likely never seen before, they don’t mention it.

Slowly, Nolan heals.

The bruises and cuts on his face fade, though the ribs take longer, even with regular pain-drains from whatever supernatural happens to be on guard duty. Nolan always looks fascinated when he watches the black veins climb up the pack’s arms, and then—always, _always_ —a little sick. The first time it happens, Theo is there with Scott—who’s the one taking Nolan’s pain—and Theo finds himself stepping in before Scott can ask what’s wrong. Scott’s too good-natured to recognize horrified guilt when he sees it, but Theo knows it intimately, and he can see the thought crossing Nolan’s mind like there’s a ticker-tape read-out across his forehead: _these are the “monsters” I tried to kill_. There’s nothing Scott can say to make it better, which Theo is qualified to state from personal experience; Nolan was going to have to make his own peace with his actions.

Initially, Nolan’s absorption into the pack happens as more of a witness protection kind of thing, everyone wanting to keep a nearly round-the-clock eye on him like it could make up for their having essentially overlooked him before the attack. The trio of Liam, Mason, and Corey expands for all intents and purposes to become a quartet, the three of them herding Nolan around to class and lacrosse practice and pack dinners and Theo’s table for homework sessions. The rest of the pack get in on it, too; Theo adds Nolan’s house to his patrol routes, and for the few weeks it takes his ribs to fully heal, Nolan joins Ms. McCall, the Sheriff, Mason, and Theo in their spectator section during lacrosse games.

At first, he can’t seem to bring himself to sit anywhere other than on Theo’s far side, away from the others. Theo catches him looking at Ms. McCall out of the corner of his eye more than once, and Nolan’s complete lack of a poker-face is almost impressive, really, his guilty thoughts clear on his face; Gabe may have been the one to shoot up the McCall house and put both Ms. McCall and Argent in the hospital, but he’d done it out of some screwed-up, misplaced affection for Nolan, and Nolan clearly feels every ounce of that.

In the end, though, Ms. McCall overrides Nolan’s apprehension by slipping in between him and Theo one night and wrapping one of her arms around his shoulders, coaxing and cajoling him into cheering with her until they’re both shouting and yelling like drunk college students at a weekend tailgate. It works; Nolan loses some of the pervasive scent of guilt he’d been carrying around that had always tasted sour in the back of Theo’s throat, and from then on he mostly stops using Theo as a human shield.

The knife wound scars.

It isn’t bad or even particularly obvious, just a thin, somewhat jagged white line that stretches from the far edge of Nolan’s right collarbone up under his right ear. The fact that it isn’t worse actually speaks to the care with which Corey tried to pull the knife away from Nolan’s neck, though Corey struggles with it; Theo catches him staring at the scar sometimes with a pinched look on his face. That lessens some after an excruciatingly awkward conversation that Theo overhears because Nolan decides to have it _in Theo’s kitchen_ during one of the nights the high school crew take over Theo’s table; Nolan’s _thank you_ speech—which he’s clearly rehearsed, to evidently limited effect—is stilted and stuttering but that actually seems to help, lets Corey step in and rescue him from himself.

Overall, Nolan becoming part of the McCall pack is almost notable in how notable it _isn’t_ ; it just sort of happens, and then it’s done.

No one ever asks Nolan’s opinion on his being forcibly adopted by the pack and Nolan never volunteers it, but Theo can’t imagine that he minds. Mostly Nolan spends his time looking pathetically grateful at—primarily—still being alive, but also the ease with which the McCall pack accepts him, all things and past deeds considered. Some days it gets to the point where Theo has to fight the urge to snap at him, try and wipe the kicked-puppy expression off his face.

Especially because it’s so often directed at _Theo_.

Nolan and Theo—and the rest of the pack, for that matter—don’t talk about the now universally-accepted fact that if Theo hadn’t had a craving for shitty hot chocolate the night of Nolan’s attack, that if he hadn’t been running a network of unwitting spies and hadn’t experienced multiple organ failures caused by wolfsbane poisoning, Nolan would be dead. The one time that Nolan attempts to bring it up, stood in Theo’s kitchen late one night with Liam, Mason, and Corey outside in the main room studying for their upcoming history test, Theo shuts him down immediately.

Nolan smells like anxiety and guilt and a half-dozen other such emotions that burn in the back of Theo’s throat when he tries it, and Theo—who had done his own version of the penance circuit already—finds himself completely, emphatically, and—admittedly—irrationally unwilling to play a part in Nolan’s twelve-step fanatical hunter recovery program. Instead he shoves the bag of leftover chinese food—which he’d come into the kitchen to retrieve solely to get Liam to stop whining about being hungry—into Nolan’s arms and then pushes past him while Nolan is still standing there looking baffled, snaps at Liam as he passes the kitchen table to lock up once they finish and goes to run a punishingly long patrol.

The fact of the matter is that sometimes Theo remembers the way that Nolan’s face had gone slack and hopeless when he’d thought that Theo was going to sacrifice him for the sake of getting his hands on Rossler and Preston, sees again the way that Nolan had not only resigned himself to that fact but had clearly convinced himself that he deserved it. He relives it in his nightmares every now and then, and then one night it gets an exciting new twist; Nolan’s expression going vacant at Theo’s words and then his jugular splitting open as Rossler calls Theo’s bluff and cuts Nolan’s throat.

Theo—who’s already used to replacing his linens on a semi-regular basis—not only shreds his sheets when he wakes up clawed the first night he has that nightmare, but puts ten long, jagged tears in his mattress, the padding spilling out of the holes like entrails. He stares at the damage in mute, horrified silence for several long seconds, and then has to rush to the bathroom to dry-heave over the toilet as his still half-asleep mind combines and then expands upon the two images, makes the padding Nolan’s intestines, split open by Rossler’s knife as Theo watches, lying helpless and dying from wolfsbane poisoning.

It’s a long, long night.

Theo can’t help but think of it now as he runs, clothes left in a pile in the preserve and his full-wolf form pushed to its limit. He knows he should slow down, clean himself up, his mouth flecked with foam and his heaving sides covered with sweat, because at this rate someone really was going to call animal control, the police—Theo semi-hysterically imagines the Sheriff having to come pick him up to pacify the terrified citizens of Beacon Hills—but he can’t.

He just keeps thinking that his deal with Scott rests on one factor, has always rested on one factor—keeping Beacon Hills safe from Monroe and her hunters—and Theo had nearly blown it, had nearly let Nolan die because he’d gotten too comfortable, too complacent, lulled into a false sense of security by the quiet peace that the McCall pack seems to project over Beacon Hills and forgetting that he wasn’t part of that; that it wasn’t for him. He knows he can’t outrun his mistake, but there’s a part of him—spurred by Nolan’s clear intention to thank Theo earlier, like Theo had done something commendable rather than nearly getting them both killed—that can’t help but try.

Eventually he has to stop, his muscles shaking and his joints threatening to collapse. He slows, panting, and then has to pause fully and look around the night-dark street; he doesn’t recognize the neighborhood he’s in immediately, since about ten minutes into his “patrol” he’d given up on lying to himself and had just given himself over to instinct, gone where his feet and the tight, panicked feeling in his chest had taken him. Within a few seconds, though, he catches a scent and has to mentally roll his eyes at his own pathetically obvious subconscious, trots slowly over to Nolan’s house a handful of meters away. He noses open the latch on the gate to the backyard and goes to collapse on the grass just off the brick patio, just lies there panting as he finally gives his body a chance to slow down and start to recover from the punishing run he’d just put it through; as he tags Nolan’s sleep-warm scent and finds himself thinking, hazily, that somehow, miraculously, they were each of them getting second-, third-, fourth-chances.

He’s still there twenty minutes later, much calmer and now all but dozing in the cool grass, listening to the quiet sounds of the suburban neighborhood as it slowly turns over from late night to early morning, when his ears perk, his nose twitches. He raises his head, scents the air again, and is almost immediately on his feet; it’s Nolan, sweat-drenched and sour-smelling, his breathing coming in hitching, uneven gasps. Theo shifts his weight from foot to foot, swallowing back the lupine whine that wants to leave his throat; Nolan and his parents were the only ones in the house, so as far as Theo can tell he’s not in any actual _danger_ …

Theo’s still debating what to do—he can’t get into the house without transforming, and if he does that he’ll be breaking into the house _au naturel_ —when the back door opens and Nolan himself steps out wearing a ratty, oversized BHHS Lacrosse hoodie that he’s clearly just thrown on, his feet bare. He closes the door softly behind him and doesn’t notice Theo, instead all but collapsing onto the steps down to the patio and dropping his face into his hands.

Theo hesitates, feeling stuck. With Nolan in the state he’s in, Theo knows he could sneak away, leave without Nolan ever realizing he was there. But the distress spilling from Nolan’s every pore makes Theo’s chest tight, his guts squirm, and even if he wanted to, Theo isn’t sure he could get his human brain to override the lupine instinct to comfort—to comfort _pack_ , some insidious part of his mind insists, though he shoves it away quickly—that slams into him. That said, he’s still currently a sizable wolf, and while Nolan now knows that Theo can transform—there’d been an incident at the last McCall pack dinner involving Malia’s coyote form and a prank that had led to Theo chasing her around the McCall yard until Derek had joined the fray and immediately put an end to that—Nolan probably wasn’t expecting Theo to be in his yard at bastard o’clock in the morning on a random school night.

There’s really nothing for it, though; eventually he’s going to have to make his presence known. So Theo makes sure his eyes are shining bright like lanterns, lowers his head, and barks softly.

Nolan’s head whips up and he jerks backward in a full-body flail against the door. Theo winces at the loud _bang_ but otherwise doesn’t move, just flicks his ears back and forth as he waits for Nolan to recognize him.

It takes a few seconds, but eventually Nolan does, “Theo…?” Theo chuffs an agreement and Nolan squints at him, obviously trying to work out what Theo is doing in his backyard. Then he seems to remember earlier, “You were out patrolling.”

Even if he was capable of speaking, it’s not like Theo would correct him to say _no, actually, I was running around like a rabid dog and happened to end up in your backyard,_ so he just chuffs again, lets the glow of his eyes fade and straightens from his hunched posture, shakes his body to loosen up his muscles, cramped from the run and the awkward pose.

Nolan continues to stare at him, still visibly confused, “But why did you come…?”

He trails off, eyes flicking up to the western corner of the second floor, where Theo knows from his turns at guard duty that Nolan’s bedroom sits; in the next instant his scent floods with embarrassment and Nolan drops his head, scrubs the back of one hand briskly over his ruddy cheeks like he can scrub away all the evidence of his distress. If he meant the move to project some semblance of maturity and calm, it backfires; he looks tired and young and, overriding all of that, vulnerable.

“It was just a dream,” He tries, striving to sound unbothered and blasé even as his scent gives lie to his words, “Sorry for the false alarm.”

Theo can’t give him a skeptical look so he just sits, communicating as best he can in his current state that he’s not going anywhere until Nolan gives him something better than that. Nolan grimaces and looks away, ducks his head and wraps his arms around his bent knees.

“Really,” He insists to the patch of grass to the left of Theo’s right paw, “It was just a stupid dream. Rossler—” Nolan’s voice cracks but he swallows and pushes through it, “Rossler and Preston came back, and this time—this time...”

Nolan can’t seem to finish, but it’s moot; Theo knows exactly how that sentence ends: _this time no one came to help me_. He’s up and moving before his conscious mind even registers the thought, crowding into Nolan’s space, canine head butting gently but firmly against Nolan’s chest, his jaw; the jagged white scar marking his neck. He ends with his head resting over Nolan’s shoulder, pressed chest to chest with him.

At first Nolan doesn’t seem to know what to do—Theo can sympathize, since he has no idea what the hell he’s doing either—but in the next instant Nolan’s scent floods with a rush of emotion—grief, terror, embarrassment, gratitude, and all strong enough to make Theo dizzy—and he wraps his arms around Theo’s lupine form, buries his face against Theo’s side, and shakes. Theo can feel his fur getting damp and he drives closer, nearly knocking Nolan over; Nolan presses back harder in response, tightens his arms.

“I’m sorry, I never meant for any of it to happen, I’m so sorry,” Nolan whispers over and over again, voice muffled by Theo’s fur, and Theo finds himself thinking _me too_ , and _don’t apologize to_ me, and endless other useless, pointless things, but he doesn’t move, just lets Nolan cling to him and shake and weep.

He doesn’t move for a long time.

\---

As it turns out, Scott isn’t done collecting strays.

Agent McCall does actually manage to tie Rossler and Preston to Tierney and Jiang’s murders, and in the process not only manages to get them held without bail—Theo watches Nolan’s shoulders slump in relief when he learns this—but _also_ manages to get Monroe and her band declared a cult. He tries to explain the significance to everyone one Sunday night pack dinner, but besides the Sheriff—who nods appreciatively—and Argent—who presumably knows a great deal about the law since he spends so much time bending it—everyone else just latches onto _additional significant law enforcement resources dedicated to catching her_ and goes back to fighting over the remaining empanadas Agent McCall had brought with him from San Francisco.

The majority of the map found in Rossler’s and Preston’s hotel room winds up being mostly useless—Monroe wisely packs up and moves whatever safehouses, weapons caches, and other locations could be given away by it once, Theo assumes, Rossler and Preston fail to check-in—but the McCall pack hits paydirt with the scents that Derek and Theo had managed to glean from Rossler’s and Preston’s belongings. Combined with the information compiled by Theo, the hunting party, and the various McCall pack allies, all marked down on Theo’s giant wall map, the scents reveal a heretofore unknown focus of Monroe and her fanatical little band; a scattering of one-horse towns near the Oregon and Nevada borders.

“What could she possibly want with those towns, they each have less than like, three hundred residents,” Liam asks one pack strategy session, staring at the map while throwing a tennis ball with _Big Sur Bar and Grill_ against the wall and catching it, over and over; the absence of his other two stooges, who were on Nolan-duty, was apparently driving him a little nuts.

Evidently Derek gets sick of the noise and distraction because he whips a hand out the next time Liam throws it, catches it on the rebound and sets it back in its place on one of Theo’s bookshelves pointedly, “That makes them perfect for hiding a bunch of militant fanatics.”

Scott frowns thoughtfully at this—ignoring Liam’s protest and his attempt to retrieve the ball, Derek intercepting him and holding him at bay with a hand on his forehead—still squinting at the map and its clusters of markers around the various tiny towns. Argent gestures for Theo to slide him his laptop, the two of them sat at the kitchen table. Theo does, watching curiously over Argent’s shoulder as he looks up additional information on the towns, looking for something to give them additional insight into why they would merit Monroe’s interest.

Eventually Scott sighs and lifts one hand to rub at the back of neck and says, “Well, I guess the only thing to do is to go check them out.”

So Scott and the hunting party spend the few weeks it takes Nolan to be fully integrated into the McCall pack hopping from one town to the next, searching each methodically for signs of Monroe and her hunters. A handful of the alphas of their allied packs send some of their betas to help out, and in the end each town winds up being—to lesser and greater degrees—intelligence goldmines. Either because it hadn’t occurred to Monroe that they’d be able to track her and her people through their scents or because she was too arrogant to believe they’d succeed, Scott and the hunting party, along with the allied betas, manage to find additional safe houses, weapons caches, and other related locations that Monroe hadn’t bothered to move, each of which reveals a wealth of additional information and leads to check out in turn.

And in some cases, they even manage to surprise hunters.

Those confrontations always seem to end in one of two ways. Either the hunters—smart enough to realize that they’ve been outmaneuvered and outnumbered by the McCall pack and allies—surrender, which allows Scott to turn them over to his dad for questioning, which then produce more leads, or—cut from the same cloth as Monroe—they try to resist.

Scott always sounds and looks a little guilty when he gives Theo updates on those incidents afterwards, blurry and shaky in the video-calls he initiates, but Theo can’t find it in himself to be sorry; he may not have reacted to Brett and Lori’s deaths as strongly as Liam, but he’s never forgotten them or the other supernaturals that Monroe and her fanatic hunters had murdered, and he still sees Gabe’s lifeless body in his dreams sometimes, sees Nolan’s battered face. He marks down the locations of each of the confrontations, the number of dead, along with the discovered safe houses and weapons caches, and doesn’t feel a lick of regret as he does.

The sudden flood of information means that Theo spends a lot of time in his apartment acting as intelligence HQ, updating his giant wall map with the information discovered by Scott and the hunting party and then uploading the up-to-date version to the shared Dropbox he’d set up weeks ago, after the fourth or fifth time that someone asked him to send them a picture of it. He spends a lot of time on video calls with Scott, with various allied pack members, each of them looking at the digital copies of the map from their respective locations, trading ideas and hypotheses and thoughts on what Monroe might be trying to accomplish, where she might be going next.

That keeps up for a couple of weeks without major incident until one day in mid-November, the air starting to take on a distinctly wintry chill, when Theo gets a text from Scott during his first early-morning patrol of the day that just says _we’re on our way back, meet us at your apartment?_

Theo frowns down at his phone, stopping in the middle of Beacon Hills Preserve as his pulse spikes and his chest tightens, concerned. Scott and the hunting party were supposed to be gone another three days, _minimum_ , before coming back to Beacon Hills. Why cut their trip short? And why Theo’s apartment instead of the McCall house?

Perhaps most curiously, why had Scott sent the text just to Theo, leaving off the high school crew, Ms. McCall, and the Sheriff?

Shaking himself mentally, Theo sets his questions aside and turns on his heel, starts back towards his apartment; the quickest way to get answers to his questions, after all, would be to meet Scott and the others. He gets back and glances at the map, calculates the hunting party’s ETA given their last known location, and heads up quickly to shower. He’s done, dressed, and perched on his table, distracting himself from worrying by studying the map and texting some of the more strategic-minded of the McCall pack allies, when he recognizes the sounds of Stiles’ Jeep.

He recognizes Scott and Malia’s heartbeats almost immediately, but frowns when he hears a third, unknown one. Scott had said that Argent and Derek were going to head straight to the station to update the Sheriff, so who did the third heartbeat belong to? He’s saved from having to wonder much longer, since a few minutes later the front door rolls open to reveal Scott, Malia, and an unknown, wide-eyed, shaggy-haired kid standing just behind Scott’s left shoulder.

Correction, Theo realizes quickly: there’s an unknown, wide-eyed, shaggy-haired _werewolf_ standing just behind Scott’s left shoulder.

 _Well_ , Theo thinks, eyebrows making a bid to meet his hairline, _this day just got interesting_.

Fifteen minutes later, sat on Theo’s couch with a glass of water held in his hands like a shield, his eyes occasionally flaring and his claws and teeth occasionally lengthening as his newly heightened senses set off his newly manifested instincts, Theo’s initial assessment of Alec is a little unkind; he thinks that Alec could _probably_ look more like a child abductee, but he’d have to put some real effort into it.

Scott seems to realize the same thing; he sighs and drops his head into his hands, elbows braced on the granite of Theo’s island in the kitchen, and rubs at his eyes, clearly exhausted. He’d quickly introduced Alec to Theo and then ushered him over to the couch, heading briefly into the kitchen to get a glass of water to shove into his hands. After that he’d left him in Malia’s capable—if less-than-delicate—hands and gestured Theo into the kitchen.

It hadn’t taken Scott long to fill Theo in, since Alec’s story is fairly—if tragically—predictable; Monroe and her hunters had gone after a relatively small pack and managed to wipe out all but one of its members, who’d gone mad when he’d forcefully inherited his alpha abilities. The new and unwilling alpha had—to borrow Stiles’ phrase, Scott finally filling in the rest of the pack via the group text now that they were safely back at Theo’s—“pulled a Peter” ( _I resent that_ , Peter had replied, to which Lydia, Stiles, and Derek had responded, near simultaneously, _no one cares_ ) and bitten Alec. Scott and the hunting party had stumbled across Monroe and her hunters going after Alec in the process of checking out one of their leads, and well. Here everyone was.

“What happened to the alpha?” Theo asks once Scott finishes relaying his story, his attention divided between Scott at the island across from him and and Alec and Malia on the couch in the living room.

“Monroe got to him before we got there,” Scott says, regret weighing down his words, “We barely managed to get to Alec in time to keep her from killing him, too.”

And then had decided to adopt him, apparently.

“I didn’t know what else to do with him,” Scott admits, like he can read Theo’s mind, “Shohreh”—alpha of the Yreka pack, whose betas had been working with Scott and the hunting party while they were in the area—“offered to take him in, but Alec asked to come back with us, at least for now.”

 _Because he imprinted on you like a baby duck_ , Theo guesses, but doesn’t say; Scott looks exhausted enough by the last twenty-four hours.

“We’re going to have to head back out after Monroe soon, Shohreh’s furious about the murdered pack—they were in her territory as refugees of sorts, I guess—and she asked for our help hunting down Monroe and the other responsible hunters.”

Theo highly doubts “asked” is the right word; having had the opportunity to get to know Shohreh over the past few weeks—she’s a pistol of a woman, bitingly funny and viciously smart—Theo had gotten the firm impression that Shohreh doesn’t so much ask for things as demand them and then wait for the universe at large to comply. He doesn’t contradict Scott, though, just waits for Scott to get around to asking what he came here to ask.

Scott gives him a shrewd look, “You know what I’m going to ask, don’t you.”

It’s not really a question so much as a statement, but Theo smirks at him and answers anyway, “It’s not exactly rocket science.”

Scott sighs, covers his face with his hands again, “I didn’t want to leave him alone at my house since we’re going to have to turn around and leave almost immediately, and he’s, uh. Got some control issues.”

As if to prove Scott’s point, there’s the sound of breaking glass out in the living room as Alec—likely reacting to the sudden sound of a car alarm going off in the parking lot outside—finally squeezes the glass in his hand too hard.

“No kidding,” Theo comments dryly, just as he hears Alec start apologizing profusely.

Outside in the living room, Malia orders Alec to _stop apologizing and give me your hand_. When Theo leans out to throw her a clean dishrag, snagged from where it’d been hanging over the oven, she’s carefully picking bits of glass out of Alec’s palm with her claws before the skin can heal over them, Alec watching her through wide, golden eyes, mouth full of fangs. Malia seems completely unfazed, catching the rag one-handed and tucking it under Alec’s wounded hand before the blood can start dripping onto Theo’s couch.

When Theo settles back into the kitchen, Scott has a hangdog look on his face, “I’m really sorry to just dump this on you, but Shohreh was, uh, pretty insistent. She says we know Monroe better than anyone at this point.” He hesitates, then finally adds, “And, well. You did help the other chimeras get control of their abilities.”

Scott’s not wrong, but Theo still winces, suddenly understanding Scott’s hesitation; Theo may have helped Josh, Tracey, Hayden, and even Corey get a handle on their abilities, but he’d also murdered half of them. That truth was one of those lingering elephants in the room that the McCall pack hadn’t really figured out how to talk about, and so mostly didn’t.

“It’s fine, Scott,” Theo tells him, ignoring the brief, hot rush of shame that wants to curl his shoulders, “That’s the deal we made, after all.”

Scott gives him a look that Theo can’t fully interpret—he looks confused and a little concerned—but he doesn’t get a chance to say anything, interrupted as he is by Malia coming into the kitchen with her dishrag full of broken bits of glass. She dumps them into the trash and then looks at the bloody rag thoughtfully, clearly debating whether to throw it away, too.

“Throw it in the sink,” Theo tells her, “Not like that’s the only blood-stained towel I’ve got.”

Beacon Hills’ incidents of supernatural catastrophes may have dropped off significantly, but that didn’t mean that a pack made up primarily of supernaturally-enhanced teenage boys didn’t occasionally result in bloodshed; he’d save it for the next time Corey accidentally broke Liam’s nose during one of their frequent wrestlings matches over such critically important matters as, for example, pizza toppings.

Malia tosses it into the sink as instructed, then says to Scott, “Check your phone. Derek and Argent are done updating the Sheriff, they’re ready to head to Yreka to meet up with Shohreh.”

Scott blinks and pulls his phone out of his pocket, where he’d apparently missed it vibrating. He swipes through his notifications, winces when he gets to one that Theo sees is from Shohreh, “Oops. Crap, we’d better get going.”

He looks back up at Theo, obviously about to ask if Theo’s one-hundred percent certain that he doesn’t mind being put on baby werewolf duty with zero notice.

Theo rolls his eyes, “Go, Scott. You keep Shohreh waiting much longer and she’s going to blame _me_.”

Scott grins at that, even through his exhaustion, and heads back out to the living room with Malia to explain the situation to Alec. Theo listens to Alec confirm his understanding, agree to stay with Theo; he sounds completely overwhelmed but like he’s trying to push through it, which Theo has to give him credit for. Though, really, what other options does he have? Soon after, Scott calls out a final goodbye to Theo, Malia echoing him, and then there’s a muted _bang_ as the door rolls shut behind them.

Unsurprisingly, when Theo steps out of his kitchen to look at him, the noise has caused Alec’s fangs and claws to pop out again. He looks at Theo through flared golden eyes, face twisted in a frustrated grimace, so Theo keeps his expression neutral and jerks his chin towards the kitchen.

“Hungry?” He asks, and stays patiently waiting, leaned against the wall until Alec’s shifted features fade and he nods hesitantly like he’s not sure Theo’s question isn’t some kind of a trap, “C’mon, then.”

Alec doesn’t move, “Aren’t you worried I’m going to break something else?”

Theo shrugs, deliberately unconcerned, “The furniture is mostly IKEA, so feel free to go nuts. That couch is probably where you’re sleeping for the foreseeable future, though, so you might want to go easy on that.”

Alec jerks his hands away from where he’d been clutching the couch cushions for support like they’ve burned him, but Theo just waits, gives him time to work up to the question he actually wants to ask, which Theo knows without Alec even opening his mouth is, _aren’t you afraid I’m going to hurt_ you _?_

“I fell asleep in the car on the way here and nearly clawed off Malia’s face when she went to wake me up,” Alec suddenly blurts like a confession.

“First off,” Theo says, raising one hand with his index finger extended, the rest curled, so that he can tick off points as he makes them, “You couldn’t put a scratch on Malia if she was blind drunk, and second, even if you did, she’d be fine.”

Then Theo raises a third finger and turns his palm so that it’s held out, lengthens the claw on his index finger of his other hand and reaches over, slices a neat line over the meat of his hand so that Alec can see it as it closes almost instantaneously.

“Come eat,” Theo repeats once Alec has flicked his eyes back up to Theo’s face from his now-healed hand, “Everything else can wait.”

Alec, after another half-second of hesitation, finally does.

\---

The food helps settle some of Alec’s uncontrolled shifts, like Theo figured it might.

It’s been years since Theo has struggled to control his shifts—control always being something he’s excelled at—but he can remember how much harder it had been when hungry, or tired, or scared. Theo doesn’t have much of a chance of doing anything about Alec being the latter for the time being, and he’d put money on Alec being unable to sleep right up until the point where he collapses from exhaustion, but the first he addresses by heating up the giant tupperware container of pasta that Ms. McCall had sent him home with last pack dinner, dropping a fork in it, and sliding it over to Alec.

Theo purposefully keeps himself busy after that, lets Alec eat without feeling like Theo is hovering over him like he’s waiting for a bomb about to go off. He cleans the blood off his palm from the healing demonstration he’d given Alec, rinses out the dishrag that Malia had used to clean up Alec’s hand earlier. He wipes down the counters, reorganizes the silverware drawers—everything in random places from the last time that Theo had made Liam empty his dishwasher as payment for coming over and eating all his food—and all the while tracks Alec’s heartbeat, his scent, as the former starts to lose its frantic rhythm and the latter some of its sour edge.

It takes three-quarters of the container of pasta and Theo very nearly devising an entirely new and optimized silverware organization strategy, but eventually Alec starts to talk, starts to ask Theo questions. At first it’s easy things (“How many people are in the pack?,” “Are they all werewolves?,” “What’s a banshee?”) but they quickly veer into harder questions (“How long have you been in the pack?” to which Theo replies shortly, “I’m not,” and is grateful when Alec doesn’t push, though he’s clearly confused). Theo also has to explain what a chimera is, since at one point Alec wrinkles his nose with a look that clearly communicates he knows he’s committing some kind of social faux pas but doesn’t understand why and says, _you don’t, um. Smell like the others_.

Once Alec gets started, it’s like the dam breaks. Theo answers everything that he can and defers what he can’t, gives Alec a list of things to ask Derek about—he refuses to direct him towards Peter, even though Peter likely knows and could help _right now_ —and, in some cases—grudgingly—Deaton. By the time the clock over the oven reads _12:00_ , the sun shining brightly in through Theo’s massive windows, Alec has settled down enough that his uncontrolled shifts have mostly stopped; he even manages to stay fully human when a car backfires down on the street, to Theo’s private surprise.

Eventually, though, he runs out of questions, and some of his nervousness returns as he looks down at his—currently completely human—hands and clenches them, then looks back up at Theo, an expression of almost comically earnest determination on his face, “So when do we start with the rest of, you know…”

He makes a vague gesture that Theo nonetheless interprets just fine.

“We don’t,” Theo answers, then explains when Alec squints at him in confusion, “You’re, what, a little over forty-eight hours old as a werewolf?” That’s probably a generous estimate, actually, but whatever; horseshoes and hand-grenades, “It’s going to take you at least a few days to even get used to your newly heightened senses. There’s no point in trying to teach you conscious control until your subconscious actually manages to adapt a bit.”

Alec looks a little crestfallen and Theo snorts, amused. Then he sighs and, in spite of the part of himself that’s absolutely certain he’s wasting both of their time, leans forward with his elbows braced on the island so that he’s holding his hands in the air between them.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Theo tells him, and has to keep himself from laughing outright when Alec sits up straight in response like some physical manifestation of the words _I’m listening_ , “You manage to master this exercise and you can come with me on patrol tonight, I’ll show you some of the advanced stuff.”

Alec nods and watches closely as Theo runs through the training exercise that Derek had tried to teach Scott, Liam, and Malia all those weeks ago. Chances are slim to nil Alec is going to be able to get it, but there’s no harm to it, and who knows? Maybe Alec would turn out to be some kind of werewolf-savant, master the whole ordeal in less than two days. Theo leaves him in the kitchen staring down at his hands as he tries it, goes to update his map with the information on Alec’s attack, the murdered pack, but keeps an ear focused firmly on Alec as he does. It winds up being more amusing than necessary, though, since the majority of what Theo hears is frustrated swearing.

He ends up falling deeper into the analysis than he’d intended, the addition of an actual attack on a pack—the first confirmed in a while—raising some interesting inferences in combination with the rest of the information the McCall pack has. He runs a few of his theories by some of their allied packs, refines them and finally texts Scott and the hunting party to fill them in. Deep as they likely were in the woods and mid-hunt, especially with someone like Shohreh leading the charge, it’s unlikely they’ll look at their phones any time soon, but Theo’s theories aren’t time-sensitive.

Alec winds up coming back out into the living room in the middle of Theo’s analysis. Theo looks a question at him but Alec just shakes his head— _fine, no issues_ —and sits on the couch, goes back to working on the exercise Theo showed him. Either he was sick of standing at Theo’s island or he didn’t want to be alone in the kitchen anymore, and Theo bets it’s probably the latter, even if Alec doesn’t realize it; very few people know better than Theo how strong the instincts for _pack_ are, after all, he thinks, wincing a little at himself. Ten minutes later, as predicted, Alec’s breathing evens out and he tips back against the back of the couch mid-attempt, fast asleep.

Theo leaves him to his much needed rest and keeps working. He’s just finished uploading a picture of the updated map to the Dropbox a few hours later, along with some of his notes on what Monroe’s switch in strategy might mean—much like the Dropbox, Theo had started a Google Doc in response to the sheer unwieldy number of texts, screenshots of notes, and excited voicemails that the McCall pack and their allies had started to trade—when his phone buzzes.

It’s Liam, asking: _Can we come meet the new werewolf after school? Scott said we weren’t allowed unless you said it was okay._ And then, probably because he can’t help himself, he adds, _Because seriously, what are you, our mother?_

 _Fuck you_ , Theo texts back cheerfully, _And no. I’m not 100% certain he wouldn’t accidentally gut Mason or Nolan_.

There’s a short delay, and then Liam asks instead, _Can I come meet him, then? Mason, Corey, and Nolan are going to go to Nolan’s to do homework._

 _Aren’t you failing chemistry?_ Theo responds, but he doesn’t specifically say “no.”

He tells himself it’s because if Liam and Alec get along alright, Theo might be able to have Liam babysit while he goes and runs patrol and checks in with his contacts, but in reality it’s because it’s been a few days since he’s seen Liam, Theo busy with the pack’s hunt and Liam busy with school and lacrosse practice. He deliberately doesn’t think about it too hard and instead turns back to the map to keep studying it, Argent finally texting him back with probing questions about one of his theories, which for Argent nearly equates to a fond _good job_ ; he only gets meticulous about theories when he thinks they might be right.

Theo’s in the middle of a heated debate with Argent—how does the man even have time to _have_ this argument, he wonders, isn’t he mid-dramatic hunt for a psychotic killer?—when he tags the sound of the elevator opening on his floor, followed shortly thereafter by the familiar rhythm of Liam’s heartbeat. Theo only has half a second to realize that he’d forgotten to warn Liam to be careful coming in and to resist his traditional urge to blow through the door like he owns the place, when Liam does just that.

The next thirty seconds unfold predictably.

Alec jolts off the couch like he’s been electrocuted, fully shifted and instinctually snarling, golden eyes wild. That’s enough to make Liam startle backwards in surprise, his features automatically shifting in response, lips curling back to show his fangs and suddenly-clawed hands _screeching_ on the metal of Theo’s doorjamb where he’d gripped it to roll the door open. Theo rolls his eyes heavenward and gives thanks that the only other apartment on his floor is unoccupied.

“This, right here?” He tells Liam pointedly, gesturing between him and Alec, both still shifted, “This is why Scott was worried about you coming over.”

Liam’s features fade to human quickly and he makes a face at Theo as he finishes stepping into the apartment and rolls the door shut behind him, “You said I could.”

“Actually I didn’t,” Theo reminds him, though he doesn’t push it; that contention rested on shaky ground.

But Liam has mostly lost interest in Theo. He stays by the door and doesn’t come further inside, but he does raise a hand to wave somewhat awkwardly at Alec, “Hi. I’m, uh. Liam. Sorry about that.”

Alec’s obviously having trouble letting go of the shift, so Theo points a finger at Liam, then jerks his thumb over his shoulder at the kitchen, “You, in there. Alec, it’s your heart-rate. Just concentrate on breathing and it’ll fade, don’t try to force it.”

Liam opens his mouth like he’s going to protest being ordered around like a child, but he glances at Alec—who’s obviously _trying_ to do as Theo advised, to limited effect—and then goes, edging around the walls of the apartment to give Alec as much room as possible. He slinks into the kitchen behind Theo smelling guilty and embarrassed, but Theo doesn’t have time to tell him it’s fine just yet.

“Breathe with me, okay, Alec?” Theo instructs, slowing his own breathing so that Alec has something to match, to focus on.

A long minute later and Alec’s features finally begin to relax. He grimaces when the shift has fully faded, clearly feeling like he’s just screwed something up; his scent goes sour with the same mix of embarrassment and guilt as Liam and he looks down, away from Theo’s face.

“Alec,” Theo says, waits until Alec looks up at him, then repeats, “ _Forty-eight hours_. I’d be more worried if you weren’t having trouble controlling the shift. Besides”—and here Theo raises his voice, deliberately—“You’re not the first to suffer an embarrassing public shift. Right, Liam?”

“Hey, screw you,” Liam responds, poking his head out of the kitchen, “Not all of us can grow up as unfeeling sociopaths.”

He looks immediately hunted, like he’s not sure if he’s made another mistake by technically coming out of the kitchen; he darts a look at Theo, and then when Theo doesn’t snap at him, steps fully into the doorway.

“Theo probably didn’t tell you,” Liam says to Alec, purposefully speaking over-loud and all but grinning at Theo out of the corner of his eye, clearly determined to steamroll right through the situation’s awkwardness, “But he used to be a gigantic dick.”

Alec glances at Theo quickly like he’s not sure he’s allowed to find this amusing, relaxes some when Theo just makes a face like _the truth hurts_ and shrugs. Permission granted, Alec gives Liam a small smile, just a quick quirk of his lips, hand coming up to scratch at the back of his neck.

“That, uh, didn’t really come up, no,” Alec tells Liam, his smile widening when Liam guffaws appreciatively.

“Well, he was,” Liam concludes, and reaches over like he’s going to shove Theo, so Theo grabs his arm and yanks him forward, trips him smoothly and lets him go so that Liam can hit the floor without dragging Theo with him.

Liam makes a grab for Theo’s leg that Theo avoids effortlessly, one hand going to his jeans pocket as his phone starts to vibrate with a call. He waves it at Liam—the gesture clearly meaning _knock it off_ —and answers it, leaving Liam to roll up into a sitting position and start peppering Alec with questions, Theo forgotten.

“Scott,” Theo greets, turning some so that he can keep an eye on Alec and Liam; Alec finally seems to realize that he’s still standing and sits, seemingly unbothered by Liam’s third-degree.

“Hey Theo,” Scott says, a little breathless like he’s walking and talking, “We’re stopping for a break. I wanted to check in and see how Alec’s doing.”

“He’s fine,” Theo answers, and means it, “How’s the hunt going?”

There’s a burst of sound like Scott’s switching the hand holding his phone, “Hard to say. Monroe’s gotten good at running the past few months, her trail’s pretty difficult to follow.”

Theo can hear Argent say something in the background but can’t hear what it is. Scott takes the phone away from his mouth and responds, then puts it back.

“Chris says you’re probably right about why Monroe went after the pack,” Scott tells him, “He wants you to re-examine—” He pauses, takes the phone away from his mouth to presumably double-check what it is, exactly, that Argent wants Theo to re-examine, “—the information from Nathaniel’s pack in Carson City? Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Theo answers automatically, mind already kicking into overdrive; the Carson City pack had reported a spattering of hunter sightings that had seemed completely random at the time, but maybe…

“Look, I’ve got to go, we’re about to head out again,” Scott says, and Theo pulls himself back to the conversation, “I don’t know how much longer we’ll be out here but I’ll keep everyone updated.”

Theo acknowledges and then hangs up, slides his phone back into his pocket and refocuses on Liam and Alec only to realize that at some point when Theo wasn’t paying enough attention, Liam had moved from sitting ten feet away to sitting right in front of Alec. His muscles tighten a bit, suddenly irrationally concerned, but he quickly realizes what they’re doing; Alec must have told Liam about the exercise that Theo had had him working on, and Liam must have started trying it again, too. As he watches Liam manages the first part—thumb and pinky of his right hand—and then after a few seconds, tongue between his teeth, Alec manages the same.

“Ha!” Liam exclaims, fist-pumping, “That’s awesome!”

It’s more than awesome, actually; it’s completely unexpected. Theo narrows his eyes at the back of Liam’s head, thrown. He watches them for a few seconds longer and then he mentally shrugs, looks around for his jacket and keys; looks like he might get to run his patrol and check with his contacts after all.

“Are you okay here for a few hours?” Theo asks Liam, already shrugging into his jacket.

“Yeah,” Liam answers distractedly, turning his face some towards Theo but keeping his eyes on his hands, on Alec’s, “Bring back food, though. Do you like Chinese?”

This he directs to Alec, who blinks, concentration broken; he eyes flicker but don’t flare, and his teeth and nails stay blunt, “Uh, yeah.”

“Excellent,” Liam says, and this time he turns to face Theo fully, ordering, “Bring back Chinese!”

“I thought I _wasn’t_ your mother,” Theo responds wryly, but Liam just flaps a hand at him, unconcerned.

He stops just briefly on his way out the door, looks back at Liam and Alec, tags how Alec’s scent has completely lost its nervous edge. _Huh_ , he thinks, studying Liam thoughtfully, and then he finishes rolling the door shut behind him.

\---

By the time Shohreh’s hunt for Monroe reaches its conclusion three days later and Scott and the hunting party are able to return to Beacon Hills, Alec has nearly mastered Derek’s training exercise, has nearly eliminated his uncontrolled shifts, and has told Theo his life story in bits and pieces.

He’d moved to Hornbrook—the tiny town near the Oregon border where the murdered pack had lived and where Scott and the hunting party had saved him from Monroe—to work for a cousin’s construction business after graduating high school last year.

“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with myself, you know?” He tells Theo the morning after his first night in Beacon Hills, perched on one of the kitchen counters, hands held out before him as he keeps working on Derek’s training exercise, “It seemed like a good idea at the time to take a year, try and figure it out.”

He looks up and smiles wryly at Theo then as if to say, _and look where that got me_. Theo snorts out a laugh and passes him a cup of coffee from the pot that had just finished brewing, then salutes him with his own mug; _amen to that_.

Alec had called his cousin on the way to Beacon Hills, bundled in the back of Stiles’ Jeep with Malia, to tell him that he’d found another opportunity, was moving south to take it. Apparently that had been all that was necessary; the cousin had wished him luck, and they hadn’t spoken since.

Theo’s brow furrows, sensing a deeper story, “And your parents? They’re not worried about you suddenly taking off for a ‘new opportunity?’”

Alec’s next attempt at the exercise—index and middle of the left hand—falters, and he clenches his hands in frustration, drops them in his lap and looks away out the kitchen’s window, “No.”

Theo doesn’t push, just takes another sip of coffee, leaned back against a section of counter perpendicular to Alec, and waits. Alec sighs and shakes his head like he’s shaking off bad memories, picks his hands back up out of his lap and starts the exercise again, overly deliberate.

“They were never exactly _Parents of the Year_ material,” He mutters, and leaves it at that.

He spends the rest of the day either working on the exercise or peppering Theo with more questions about Monroe, about Scott and the McCall pack, about werewolves in general. Now well-fed and at least somewhat better rested, his shell cracks a little and he loses some of the pervasive scent of terror that had been following him around, though every now and then a sound or an unexpected movement catches him off-guard and his scent spikes with anxiety. But with every hour he seems to relax more and more, starts raiding Theo’s kitchen without constantly asking if it’s okay, explores Theo’s apartment. He’s especially fascinated by Theo’s collection of _tchotchkes_ , to the point that Theo challenges him to start identifying which was given to him by which pack member in an attempt to keep him busy while Theo works with the map and tries to divine new information for Shohreh and the hunting party to use.

Theo is in the middle of a call with Nathaniel—alpha of the Carson City pack, the one whose information that Argent had wanted him to reexamine—giving Alec thumbs-up or thumbs-down to his _tchotchke_ guesses, when he hears the sound of the elevator opening on his floor. Alec must hear it, too; he fumbles the small wire figurine of a coyote—Malia had found a souvenir shop in Elk Creek that sold them, and had gleefully bought a whole ‘pack’ of them—in his hands but manages to catch it and place it carefully back on its shelf without incident. Then he turns to look at Theo, his expression and scent uncertain.

 _It’s Liam_ , Theo mouths, resigned; Liam has third period free, so Theo really should have expected this. Then he catches the second heartbeat and realizes that Liam has brought Corey with him, and he just sighs.

“Thanks, Nathaniel,” Theo says as Liam rolls his front door open, “I’ll let Argent and the others know.”

He hangs up just as Liam and Corey finish stepping inside, Corey rolling the door shut behind him.

“You,” Theo comments, pointing at Corey with the hand still holding his phone, “do not have third period free.”

Corey grins at him, unaffected by Theo’s unimpressed tone, “We’re just going over our papers that we turned in last week, and I got an A.”

“Because of _Mason_ ,” Theo points out, but lets it go; he’s pretty much talking to himself at this point anyway, since Liam and Corey are far more interested in Alec.

They at least have the good sense not to crowd him; Corey waves from the door, “Alec, right? I’m Corey.”

“Oh! The other chimera,” Alec realizes, apparently recalling the information he’d gotten from Theo during his marathon question session. Then he blanches like he’s not sure if he just put his foot in his mouth.

But Corey just chirps _yep_ , unbothered. Liam takes over from there, dragging Corey over to join Alec in front of the bookshelves, already talking a mile a minute. Theo keeps an eye on them for a few seconds, but besides one final, wide-eyed glance from Alec, they seem fine, so Theo unlocks his phone and calls Argent to fill him in on his reexamination of the information from the Carson City pack.

Corey and Liam take advantage of his distraction to skip the rest of school, though Theo—coming back to himself from the strategic fugue he’d fallen into, studying the map and trading phone calls with Scott and the hunting party—makes them go to lacrosse practice. Once they’ve left he makes Alec sit on the couch while Theo cooks—nothing fancy, just stir-fry—and has Alec identify what spices he’s using by scent, one at a time. He struggles with it at first, but by the time Theo lets him into the kitchen to grab a bowl, he can identify nearly all of them merely from Theo opening the containers.

He’s also feeling comfortable enough apparently to rib Theo for his, quote, _obsession with ginger_. Theo, privately pleased at his continued relaxation but with a reputation to maintain, makes him do to the dishes in retaliation, Alec complaining good-naturedly about the sudden overpowering stench of the lemon-scented soap.

The next day, Theo gets up early to run his patrol and check in with a select few of his contacts—the barista at the coffee shop near Beacon Hills’ main hotel, the waitstaff at the truck stop near the major state highways leading into and out of the city—and then swings back by his apartment, picks Alec up and takes him back out to the Preserve. It’s obvious the second that Alec steps foot outside of the complex that he’d gotten used to the limited amount and types of stimuli in Theo’s apartment, cloistered away for two days as he’d been; sat in the front seat of Theo’s truck, he winces at the cacophony of noise and the overwhelming amount of scents that come along with a decent-sized town. Out of the corner of his eye, Theo can see blood welling up between his clenched fingers from where his no-doubt extended claws have dug into his palms.

“I don’t understand how you can handle all this,” Alec confesses ten minutes later, expression twisted in pain as a semi roars by them on the highway.

“It gets easier,” Theo assures him.

And it does. Over the next few hours Theo runs Alec around the Preserve, lets him shift when the instinct to shift takes him and tells Alec to let it fade in his own time, his message clear; _give in_. It takes an hour or so for Alec to really trust it, but once he starts to catch on to what Theo’s doing—Theo had told Alec at the beginning of the run to pick a direction and go, had followed a few paces behind him and only intervened to herd him away from the sound and smell of people—he lets go.

It’s immediately clear to Theo how much Alec had needed the release—he’d spent three days desperately trying to stay in control—and how much it helps for Alec to stop fighting, to embrace his new instincts and abilities. By the time he collapses in the middle of a small clearing several hours later, he’s panting and sweating and covered in dirt, but his scent is finally clean; no anxiety, no fear, just pure adrenaline and elation.

“So,” Theo says, crouching down near where Alec had collapsed flat on his back, picking up a handful of fallen pine needles and idly pulling them apart, “Maybe this werewolf thing isn’t all bad?”

“No,” Alec agrees, laughing breathlessly, “No, maybe it’s not.”

He falls asleep almost immediately when he gets back into Theo’s truck, the noise of the highway and the stench of the city—pleasant and otherwise—apparently no longer enough to keep him on edge. Theo wakes him up back at the complex and manages to get him back upstairs, but Alec doesn’t even manage to undress before he collapses back on the pull-out couch, dead to the world. Snorting out a laugh, Theo leaves him there and goes to shower, comes back down and gets to work on the map and the hunt for Monroe.

Liam tries again that night to get Theo to let the full high school crew come over, but Theo—who glances over at Alec, who’d woken up bleary-eyed and groggy but obviously still feeling some of the morning’s satisfaction—considers, then writes back, _One more day. Humor me_. He’d gotten Alec to burn through some of his pent-up emotional backlog and given him the opportunity to embrace his new capabilities, but that had primarily cleared the way for Alec to actually learn to control them.

 _Paranoid_ , Liam texts back, but he doesn’t fight it.

Theo repeats the same process the next day, only this time in the Preserve he only gives Alec an hour or so to run free before he makes him stop. The first thing he does is make Alec run through Derek’s exercise, which Alec manages with only minor mistakes. Then he makes him sit—much to Alec’s disappointment—and close his eyes.

“Tell me what you hear,” Theo orders, and flicks Alec on the forehead when he answers _the wind_ , tongue clearly in his cheek; Alec recoils and rubs at the spot but then settles down and actually does as Theo asked.

They continue in that vein for the next few hours, working through smell, hearing, even Alec’s supernaturally-enhanced eyesight. Theo makes him hold various parts of the shift but not others for stretches of time—eyes and claws but no fangs, fangs but no eyes or claws—and then, once he’s confident Alec’s managing those well enough, he ups the ante.

“You’re going to count to two hundred,” Theo tells him, making him close his eyes again, “And then you’re going to come find me.”

“We’re seriously playing hide-and-seek?” Alec asks incredulously, but he keeps his eyes closed.

“That we are,” Theo agrees, and then he adds, “And I would strongly recommend playing to win.”

What he doesn’t tell Alec is that he doesn’t plan on staying in one place, and he doesn’t plan on playing fair; more interesting than whether Alec can find Theo using his new senses is what Alec will do when Theo finds _him_.

He gives Alec a few rounds to get confident—to get cocky—and then he turns the tables. The next time that Alec starts searching for him Theo doubles back, circles around until he’s coming at Alec from behind and then surges forward until he can slam into Alec’s back, knock him tumbling forward. Alec hits the ground and then comes up snarling, fully shifted. He manages to drop it quickly enough, and from his chagrined expression he gets the lesson, too.

“Want to try that one again?” Theo asks him pointedly.

Alec nods, and this time when Theo circles back to try and get the drop on him, it’s clear that Alec’s on-guard. But Theo’s been at this a lot longer than he has, and it doesn’t take him long to exploit one of Alec’s blindspots; it’s clear he’s still relying heavily on his eyes and not enough on his ears and nose, which lets Theo sneak up behind him and hook the back of one of his knees, send him sprawling onto his back.

But he stays fully human.

“Okay,” He wheezes, looking up at Theo from the ground, “Okay, one more time.”

In fact they try it three more times, and Alec improves each one. He learns to use his ears, his sense of smell, to the point that Theo actually struggles to find an opening. But inevitably a bird will call or a runner will pass close enough by their secluded section of forest that their scent catches Alec’s attention, and Theo’s able to take ruthless advantage to knock Alec flat on his back, or onto his elbows, or onto his stomach. But he controls the shift each time, keeps his features human, not even a flicker of gold in his eyes.

Finally Theo calls a halt, Alec leaning against a tree as he works to get his breath back.

“What Liam had mentioned before, about you previously being a gigantic dick?” Alec pants, bent at the waist with one hand clutching his side, the other still on the tree; he tips his head up to grin at Theo, “I think I can see it, now.”

Theo snorts a laugh, “You’re welcome.” Then he pulls out his phone, checks the time, “C’mon, we should get back. I told Liam and the others that they could come by after practice today and you’re going to need to crash for a few hours if you don’t want to be comatose.”

He’s already turned to start heading back towards his truck but then he catches a sudden, sour spike in Alec’s scent, and pivots on his heel so he can turn to look back at him. Alec has straightened, bottom lip between his teeth; the hand that he had braced on the tree tightens enough to shave off some of the bark.

“You think I’m...I mean, you’re not worried…” He can’t seem to put it into words so Theo takes pity on him.

“Wouldn’t have told them they could if I was,” Theo answers, and turns to start walking again, “Hurry up. I’m starving and the food’s back at the apartment.”

Theo keeps a close ear on Alec, waits to see if he’s going to have to go back and get him, but after a few long seconds Alec jogs to catch up with him. Back in the truck he’s quiet, staring down at his hands, running the thumb of one hand over the blunt, human nails of his opposite hand. A few times his heart-rate spikes and Theo can see him go to open his mouth out of the corner of his eye, but he always shuts it again without speaking; he’s probably realizing, like Theo had earlier that morning when he’d given into the high school crew’s persistent nagging, that tonight would be the first time he would have really been around humans since his transformation. The thought is clearly terrifying him and for a long minute Theo thinks about calling it off, giving Alec another day or two, but then he discards that idea; Alec couldn’t stay hidden in his apartment forever.

Back at the apartment Alec tries to beeline it for the shower but Theo stops him, “Eat something first, unless you’re dying to crack your head open on the tile when you pass out.”

Alec grimaces—Theo had been pretty merciless in driving home the sometimes insane requirements of werewolf metabolisms—and follows Theo into the kitchen, eats whatever Theo puts in front of him and then escapes up to the shower. Theo watches him go without a word, and deliberately stays in the kitchen, out of sight, until Alec has come back downstairs and crawled back onto the pull-out couch and passed out, exhausted from both the morning’s exercises and the low-grade dread he’s clearly trying to hide.

Once Alec’s asleep, Theo takes his own shower and then settles down with his laptop at the table, checking his texts and the Google Doc for any new information gathered by Shohreh’s hunting party or the other allied packs. The pace of the hunt was obviously starting to get to Monroe and her band, human as they were; two of Shohreh’s betas had managed to corner two hunters and had agreed, after what Scott calls a _disagreement_ and Theo—reading between Scott’s, Argent’s, and Derek’s lines—deems a _standoff_ , that instead of simply killing them they would stay put with them until Agent McCall could come retrieve them.

Theo shakes his head in disbelief, thinking _Jesus, Scott_ , as he marks down the location of the captured hunters on the map.

He’s still there hours later, working to coordinate the hunting party’s last best chance at snaring Monroe, since even the werewolves were going to start flagging soon; a dragnet of sorts of allied packs, spread out in a rough semi-circle and covering a large swath of eastern Oregon and western Idaho. Shohreh, barking orders at Theo through a video-call that she’d made Scott initiate, had told Theo what packs to call, given him the names and numbers of alphas for packs that the McCall pack hadn’t yet established relationships with; they planned to drive Monroe and her remaining hunters straight into the waiting jaws of one of the packs, come hell or high water.

Theo makes the calls, tracks the various packs’ progress as they spread out. He’s chewing on the end of one of his markers, staring at the tacks and pins he’d placed to represent the packs, their betas, plays out a hundred different routes Monroe could take and finds himself nearly snarling in frustration; the western United States was just too damn _big_ , and Monroe and the hunters she had with her numbered less than seven, from what they could tell. Saying that it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack would be accurate only if the needle in question was capable of exercising free will.

His phone buzzing from where he’d left it on the table nearly causes him to bite through the marker altogether. It’s Liam, warning him, _I’m going to assume you’re in the middle of something and that it isn’t going well because your apartment reeks like the school during finals week, but we’re here_.

 _Shit_ , Theo thinks, and then forces himself to take a deep breath in, let it out slowly through his nose.

Then he takes the marker in his hand and flings it at where Alec is still sleeping, hits him in the middle of chest, “Alec, wake up. Liam and the others are here.”

Alec comes awake flailing but—the tension in Theo’s chest unwinding some—he doesn’t shift. He blinks owlishly at Theo for a few seconds and then turns his head to stare with comically wide eyes at the door, where Theo can hear the sound of footsteps and joking conversation, smell the scent of... _Gabriela’s_ , he thinks? It smells like her habanero salsa, anyway. Alec looks panicked as the footsteps get nearer and nearer the door, and Theo forces his mind away from the map, from the giant question mark hanging over what was happening with the hunting party, and goes to intercept Liam and the others to buy Alec some time.

“Try to remember you’ve been shot at by fanatic killers,” Theo tells as he passes him, not unkindly, “My confidence level is high you can handle dinner.”

He hears Alec mutter, _I honestly might have preferred a second round with the hunters_ , but does them both the favor of pretending he doesn’t. The next second he can hear Alec scooting out of bed, heading up the impractical staircase to borrow another change of clothes; Theo tells himself that if tonight goes anywhere above _non-catastrophic_ , the first thing he was doing tomorrow was pulling a Lydia and taking Alec to go get a new wardrobe so that Theo could once again have his own.

He rolls open his front door before one of the high school crew can and gets his palms flat on Liam’s and Corey’s chests—the two on the outside of the rough semicircle that they’d formed—and pushes them back a few paces, Nolan and Mason stepping back automatically as well, until Theo can hook a panel of the door with his heel and slide it back shut. Liam and the others are looking at him like he’s lost his mind, their hands full of boxes of burritos and bags of tortilla chips and Mexican sodas—which Nolan looks like he’s liable to drop at any moment—but Theo just drops his hands and doesn’t budge.

“Uh, hi, Theo,” Corey greets uncertainly.

“I need you four to promise me something,” Theo starts, and glares at Liam warningly when he goes to open his mouth; Theo knows Liam well enough at this point to recognize incoming sarcastic asides, “I’m serious.”

“Okay,” Nolan says quietly, sincerely, the bottles in his arms _clinking_ some as he tightens his grip, “We’re listening.”

Theo looks at him, a little taken aback, then continues; gift horses, etc., etc., “Alec has been a werewolf less than five days, and while his control over his shift has improved exponentially, there’s still a risk that if something startles him, he won’t be able to help himself.”

“You already told us this,” Liam interjects impatiently, though he subsists when Mason elbows him, hard.

Theo ignores this byplay to look hard at Nolan and Mason, “If he hurts one of you accidentally, even if it’s because of something one of you four do, he is _never_ going to forgive himself.”

Whatever amusement Liam and the others may have been finding in Theo’s odd behavior drains out of their expressions, their demeanors, at Theo’s words. He feels a little bad, honestly—they’re not stupid, and he doubts they would have acted that way even without his warning—but the fact of the matter is that Nolan and Mason are too used to hanging around supernaturals with pristine control over their abilities. Alec isn’t Scott, or Derek, or even Malia—arguably the most likely to unintentionally shift—and he doesn’t have the same connections to Nolan or Mason yet that might otherwise protect them.

“Just go easy,” Theo finishes, lets some of the steel drop out of his voice as he says it, “Okay?”

He gets back of chorus of subdued agreements and so, with one last pointed look, he reaches behind himself until he can hook the door handle and roll it open. Corey heads in first, followed by Mason and then Nolan, the three of them heading towards the table and Alec, stood awkwardly next to it with his hands tucked protectively under his biceps.

Liam doesn’t move to go inside, just stays studying Theo in the hallway, expression appraising, “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

Theo thinks about snapping at him, saying _nothing_ , or defending his completely justified concerns, but in the end he just rakes a hand through his hair and then rubs it over his eyes, sighing.

“No, I really don’t,” He answers honestly, and hopes Liam somehow manages to divine _why_ ; that the idea of talking about the trap steadily attempting to close around Monroe feels like jinxing it.

Liam pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, looks away from Theo for a beat then back, “Is whatever it is going to fall apart if you stop thinking about it long enough to eat?”

Theo snorts a humorless laugh, lets his head go lax on his neck and drop down, then looks back up at Liam, “Probably not.”

The fact that Theo had very little control over the events unfolding several hundred miles north is the root of the problem, actually.

“Okay,” Liam says, and holds up the box of food in his hands pointedly, “Then go easy on _yourself_ for a half hour and come do that.”

Liam is looking at him expectantly, waiting, so Theo nods. That seems to be enough for Liam, who bumps him with his shoulder and then heads into the apartment, greeting Alec loudly—deliberately over-casual—and joins the rest of the high school crew at the table. When Theo finishes rolling the door shut behind himself and heads for the table, Alec has at least sat down, but he still hasn’t taken his hands out from where he’d pinned them between his ribs and his biceps.

Liam and Corey, either because of Theo’s warning or their own common-sense, take the seats immediately next to Alec, creating a supernatural buffer of sorts between him and Nolan and Mason. It helps, some; Alec at least takes his hands out from where he’d been hiding them and accepts a burrito and then a soda when Corey hands them to him, but Theo can practically see his muscles trembling he’s so tense, and his scent is anxious enough that Theo—and Liam and Corey as well, he realizes—all struggle not to react to it, let it kick their anxiety up, too.

The first ten minutes are an excruciating exercise in awkward social interactions, but if only to prove Theo to be as unnecessarily paranoid as they’d spent the past three days accusing him of being, Mason, Corey, Nolan, and Liam just keep doggedly asking Alec questions, drawing him into conversation, until bit by bit, clearly in spite of himself, Alec starts to relax. And it isn’t just Alec; Liam doesn’t let Theo drift into his own head either, pulls him back by asking him ridiculous questions or by pelting him with bottle caps, which typically ends with Theo catching them and whipping them back to nail him in the forehead while Liam tries and fails to dodge them.

By the time all the food is gone, Alec’s scent is back to baseline and he’s joking and laughing with the rest of the high school crew. The few times that Mason or Nolan had gotten up from the table—once to run into the kitchen to grab paper towels, once to grab a bottle opener—he’d tensed, jerked his hands into his lap and kept them there until they’d returned to their seats with either Corey or Liam safely between them, but overall Theo thinks, _progress_ , and is willing to chock the night up to a win.

 _Maybe more than that, actually,_ Theo finds himself thinking, catching Alec for the fourth or fifth time that night darting a furtive look at Nolan. He has to stop himself from outright laughing when Nolan does the same a handful of seconds later, the two just missing each other.

But he can’t keep his attention from drifting back to the map. Argent had taken to texting him as frequent of updates as he could manage as Shohreh’s hunting party dogged Monroe and her hunters’ trail, and Theo had taken to trying to calculate out their most likely routes in his head, adjust which packs should wait where. An hour in Liam either gets frustrated with his clear distraction or takes pity on him, because he initiates a quick dinner clean-up and then gets the high school crew and Alec relocated, Nolan, Mason, and Corey claiming seats—with permission, Alec looking a little baffled at being asked—on the still pulled-out couch, Liam and Alec on the floor. He shoots a dry look at Theo as he’s ushering everyone over but doesn’t say a word, and Theo can’t help the flare of affection that blooms in his chest.

It leaves him free to return to coordinating the various packs, his fingers flying over his phone’s keyboard as he trades texts with Argent, with the alphas of the waiting packs, trying to tighten the noose around Monroe, leave her with no holes to dive through. The sound of the high school crew and Alec talking, laughing, forms a comforting white noise that helps control some of his frustration, his worst-case _what-ifs_ ; he finds himself taking deep drags of the scent-warm air at times, holding it in his lungs for long stretches of seconds.

He doesn’t realize how late it’s gotten, stood in front of the map with all his attention on it—his laptop split-screened between multiple Google Maps panes and his fingers stained with various shades of marker from adjusting the positions of the different parties on the map—until he feels a hand on his shoulder and has to stop himself from whipping around fully clawed, surprised. He still nearly manages to elbow Liam in the face, Liam leaning back quickly to avoid it.

Theo closes his eyes and exhales out harshly through his nose, shoves down his first, instinctual reaction to snarl in annoyance and just murmurs, “That was not very smart.”

“You weren’t responding to your name,” Liam counters unapologetically. He studies the map for a moment, eyes running over the marks as he works to piece together the situation; it doesn’t take him long, “You think it’s going to work?”

Theo sighs heavily and drops his head into his heads, scrubs at his eyes, “I don’t know.” Then he adds quietly, honestly; a little helplessly, “I hope so.”

Then he blinks, coming back to himself a bit, and glances at Liam, at the pitch-blackness of the sky outside, at where Nolan, Mason, and Corey have apparently fallen asleep on the pull-out couch, Corey and Mason flat, Nolan curled awkwardly into one corner. Alec’s asleep, too, leaned back against one of the pull-out couch legs, his legs straight out in front of him and his head tilted back against the mattress.

“What time is it?” Theo asks, bemused.

“Close to one in the morning,” Liam answers distractedly, still studying the map, “Guess we all lost track of time.”

“Christ,” Theo swears and rubs his fingers over his tired eyes, “You should wake Mason, Corey, and Nolan up, take them home.”

“Makes more sense to just stay here,” Liam replies, shrugging, then when Theo looks like he’s going to argue, he adds, “I’m not trying to be difficult, it just does. We all have to be up in five hours to get to school, we can just wake up a little earlier and leave from here.”

Theo doesn’t have the energy or the desire to have this fight, “Fine. But they can’t stay like that. There’s a key to Derek’s apartment in the leftmost kitchen drawer, have Mason and Corey take his bed. You and Nolan can take mine.”

“And you’re sleeping where?” Liam challenges.

“I’m not,” Theo answers shortly, then says when Liam’s expression goes mutinous, “Keep arguing with me and I’m kicking you all out. Go wake them up, get them sorted out.”

For half a second he thinks Liam’s going to push his luck, but after a beat he just clenches his jaw and turns for the kitchen; Theo turns back to the map but listens to him digging through drawers, looking for the key. He comes back out with it in hand, goes to the couch—skirting around Alec—and shakes Nolan awake, points upwards to indicate the loft and then, once Nolan nods groggily and slides off the couch, starts that way, he wakes up Corey and Mason. Theo listens to him tell them to go up to Derek’s, hears him hand over the key; they stumble their way upright and go, clearly only interested in getting back to sleep.

The commotion, restrained as it was, is still enough to wake Alec. He jerks awake looking confused, but not panicked; Liam grins at him—Theo watching out of the corner of his eye—and jerks his chin at the now-empty pull-out couch, waits until Alec’s climbed groggily onto it and collapsed back flat to rejoin Theo.

“Happy?” He demands, voice low in deference to Nolan and Alec.

“Four out of five,” Theo says instead, “Go upstairs.”

But Liam just takes a seat at the table, hooks Theo’s laptop with a finger and slides it over so it’s in front of him.

“If they’re getting close to catching her, I want to be here,” He says simply, and looks up at Theo; his expression’s neutral, but the look in his eyes is immovable.

Theo stares at him, jaw working, and still hasn’t made up his mind how to respond when his phone buzzes; Argent, updating him on the hunting party’s location. He looks down at the set of coordinates, looks back up at Liam, and then gives in, all at once.

“She’s heading farther north instead of west. I need to call the Chemult and Creswell packs and have them shift accordingly. Update the map, will you?” He orders Liam, forwarding Liam the coordinates and then tapping Elsie’s—alpha of the Chemult pack—number.

They spend another three hours like that, Liam helping him keep the flow of information organized, the packs updated, but by four a.m., it’s over. The Creswell, Chemult, and Yreka packs—Scott and the hunting party included—converge on the hunters’ trail like a pincer closing, finally cornering them in a deserted warehouse parking lot in Sutherlin, but when they do, one thing becomes instantly clear; Monroe isn’t with them.

“They kept her clothes,” Argent explains when the dust finally settles and he can call to update, Theo and Liam on speakerphone on Theo’s balcony to try and avoid waking Nolan or Alec, “They must have realized there was no way out, decided to sacrifice themselves to let her escape somewhere along the way.”

Liam—who’d already shattered the knuckles of his right hand slamming his fist into one of the brick walls of Theo’s apartment when they’d originally found out about Monroe—gives a muted snarl, mouth full of fangs and eyes flared. Theo feels for him, he does, but he’s too drained to do much more than grimace in solidarity.

“And the other hunters?” Theo asks, forcing himself to stay detached, pragmatic.

Argent hesitates and Theo frowns down at the phone, interest piqued, “Remember our theory that the ones who were after Alec were also the ones who’d murdered the Yreka refugee pack?” When Theo indicates yes, Argent continues, “Shohreh and her betas picked up their trail pretty much immediately after we stopped them from killing Alec, they haven’t had time to slow down.”

 _Or clean up_ , Theo realizes, “Shohreh could tell who they were.”

“Four of the seven,” Argent confirms, “Scott and Shohreh have finally finished screaming at each other, so once McCall gets here with his agents to pick up the three that are still alive, we’re going to crash with the Creswell pack for a few hours and then head back.”

Theo spends a few more minutes talking with Argent, tying up the remaining loose ends and watching Liam pace angrily back and forth across the enclosed space. Then he hangs up and folds his arms over the balcony railing, drops his forehead onto them, and just breathes. He hears Liam join him, and when he tilts his head to the side to look at him, Liam has his chin propped up on his folded arms and is looking out into the night-dark city, expression unreadable.

“I’m not sorry Shohreh killed those hunters,” He suddenly announces, almost like a dare. He turns some so he can meet Theo’s eyes, jaw clenched, “I know Scott thinks it makes us just like them or whatever, but I’m not.”

Theo looks at him for a breath longer, then turns his head further so he can see Alec through the windows, sprawled out on the pull-out couch, exhausted from a long night—a long five days, really—of desperately trying to adjust to his new reality after being made into one of Monroe’s newest pieces of collateral damage. He thinks of the thin scar on Nolan’s neck, the one he touches sometimes when he’s nervous, or scared. And he thinks of Gabe, bleeding out alone in the hospital with only Theo, of all people, to see him through the end.

“I’m not, either,” Theo admits, turning his head back so he can meet Liam’s eyes, let him see the tired truth there.

Liam stares at him for a a few long, slow minutes, and then he turns back to the city, so Theo does too. They stay there a long time.

\---

Later that afternoon, Scott comes back from the failed hunt for Monroe—and his failed hostage negotiation with Shohreh—takes one look at Liam sat bleary-eyed and sullen at Theo’s table, manifestly not at school with Mason, Corey, and Nolan, obviously having been up all night helping with the hunt, and wheels on Theo. Theo keeps his expression blank and waits, just lets Scott snarl _I thought we’d agreed you’d keep him out of it_ , and doesn’t say a word.

But Liam does, “Oh, _fuck_ you, Scott. It’s not his fault and I’m not some _child_.”

Fifteen minutes later, sat on the concrete barrier that forms Derek’s balcony railing, leaned back against the rough brick wall it connects to, Theo accepts the mug of coffee that Derek hands him with a quiet _thanks_ and doesn’t even have to draw on his supernatural senses to hear Scott and Liam still screaming at each other two floors down in his apartment.

Theo had been prepared to bear the brunt of Scott’s frustration—and his inevitable apology afterwards—but he hadn’t really known what to do with Liam’s improvised interjection. Malia, on the other hand, had clearly had zero patience for the whole cluster; she’d turned to Alec, sat wide-eyed and frozen watching the scenario unfold like some doe-eyed deer-in-the-headlights on the pull-out couch, and said, _I’m not sticking around for this. C’mon, I’ve been stuck in a car all day, I want to go run the Preserve_. Alec had followed her out in clear bewilderment just as Scott had finished getting over his shock, and just seconds before Derek had nudged Theo gently in the shoulder and jerked his chin upwards towards his own apartment.

“You know he’s not actually pissed at you, right?” Derek checks, leaning against the railing a few inches from Theo’s bent knees, his own mug held between his clasped hands.

“I know,” Theo says, and he does.

“He’s just” _—angry, and, tired, and heartbroken—_ “frustrated. It was a long four days.”

 _And not just for Scott, it seems_ , Theo thinks, watching as Derek blows out a long, exhausted exhale and rubs the side of his face against one of his outstretched arms, the few hours of sleep he and the rest of the hunting party managed to catch with the Creswell pack clearly inadequate. Theo wants to tell him that he’s free to go back inside, collapse into bed; that Theo doesn’t need a babysitter, or a keeper, just because Scott lost his temper. He doesn’t, though; he’s pretty sure the whole interaction is more for Derek’s sake than his.

“The murdered pack, Alec, the four hunters that Shohreh executed,” Derek continues, “The bulk of it really didn’t start to sink in until we were on the way back.”

“I thought we had her,” Theo confesses, so Derek doesn’t have to.

“Didn’t we all,” Derek mutters, and takes a long drink of his coffee.

Taken aback some by the strength of the bitterness in his voice, half-listening to Scott and Liam tearing verbal strips off of each other, Theo finds himself in the odd position of playing optimist, “Nine hunters off the board, though—that’s...not bad.”

Derek gives him a strange look, obviously noticing the role-shift, too. Then he sighs, “No, it’s not. And given a few days to decompress and come to terms with the whole shitshow, I’m sure we’ll all see it that way.” He pauses, tilts his head like he’s listening to the argument still going strong two floors down, “Even Scott.”

“Even Liam,” Theo agrees, adds; he’d finally convinced Liam to catch a few hours of sleep after Mason, Corey, and Nolan had woken up and headed to school—the three of them and Alec aware that something had happened while they were asleep, but wisely refraining from asking—and before Scott and the others had arrived.

Theo hadn’t been able to. He’d sat at his table and stared at the map, at their plan that should have worked, and just listened to Liam and Alec breathe; just stared at the clusters of black _Xs_ and breathed when they did.

He and Derek spend the half hour it takes for the argument downstairs to finish—well, end, anyway, since it doesn’t finish so much as abruptly stop when Liam snaps _I have to get practice_ and storms out—talking about other things. Derek asks how Alec fared while they were gone, quizzes Theo on his newly-created werewolf training strategies, looks mildly impressed when Theo tells him how close Alec is to mastering his exercise. His scent takes on a complicated note as they talk and Theo puzzles at it for a few minutes before he remembers Derek’s dead betas, murdered by the alpha pack before Theo came to town.

Theo hesitates, a wary part of himself warning _this could seriously backfire_ , but Derek’s quiet grief is eating at him, so: “What were they like, your betas?”

Derek looks at him sharply and for half a second Theo’s sure he’s made a mistake, braces himself, but then Derek’s eyes go distant and he turns back to Beacon Hills sprawled out along the horizon before them.

“Erika and Boyd,” Derek tells him, “They were...brave. Eager to learn everything they could about being werewolves.” He hesitates, then adds with heartbreaking sincerity, “They would have been great at it, if they’d been able to grow into their abilities.”

 _If they’d had a better alpha_ , he doesn’t say, but it’s there in the heavy weight to the silence that follows his words. And Theo suddenly can’t stand it, can only see the way that Scott automatically looks to Derek for support, for guidance, can only remember Derek’s endless patience with Liam and Malia and Corey, young and impetuous and still so naive, sometimes. How Derek handles Mason and Nolan, effortlessly accommodating their humanity without ever drawing unwanted attention to it.

And anyway, what he says next is just the truth, brutal as it may be.

“Well,” Theo starts, looks to the horizon as he continues in a deliberately easy manner, “At least you can take comfort in the fact that, of the former alphas in Beacon Hills, you weren’t the _worst_ one to ever befall an unfortunate pack of teenagers.”

He can feel Derek’s initial, startled look burning against his cheek, but he keeps his face turned towards the distant city, doesn’t meet his eyes; he’d said what he said to try and leech some of Derek’s muted guilt, but now that he has, the jolt of self-loathing that hooks into his system, burrows its way into his veins, feels right somehow. Two of Derek’s betas may have been killed on his watch but at least he hadn’t murdered them himself in a desperate and doomed bid for power.

Theo’s still lost in that spiral of thoughts when Derek finally speaks.

“That’s true,” He says, and Theo winces, though the slight is well-deserved. Then Derek continues, and Theo can’t help but look at him, a little stunned, “That dubious honor _definitely_ goes to Peter.”

Derek grins at him, and it’s a little crooked, a little broken, but it banishes some of the acidic barbs eating at Theo’s veins. Theo swallows around his suddenly tight throat and just lifts his mug of coffee, watches as Derek does the same; _cheers to that_.

They drift into companionable silence after that, and then eventually Theo—hearing Liam’s snarled pronouncement and the slam of his own front door—thanks Derek for the coffee and hops down, heads back inside and deposits his mug in Derek’s dishwasher while Derek heads up his own impractical staircase to get some much-needed rest. When Theo walks back into his apartment Scott is still there, sat at Theo’s kitchen table fiddling listlessly with one of the many paper cranes that Liam had folded out of discarded notebook paper, covered in Theo’s cramped scrawl and torn out in frustration throughout the early morning as he tried to calculate Monroe’s trajectory. Scott doesn’t look up at him as Theo silently joins him at the table, just gently tosses the crane away and drops his head heavily into his hands.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Scott says, his voice muffled some by his palms.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Theo tells him quietly.

“Except I do,” Scott disagrees, dropping his hands so he can meet Theo’s eyes.

He looks terrible, his skin seeming stretched thin over his cheekbones, dark circles under his eyes, werewolf healing or no. It has more to do with his body language, Theo knows, Scott’s whole body seeming to sag under the weight of his self-declared mission, and it makes him hard to look at; Scott’s usually so untouchable.

“You were right, you’d asked me to keep him out of it,” Theo counters, because Scott _had_ ; he’d looked at Theo all those months ago and he’d said _they deserve a shot at a normal life_ , and Theo had tried but he hadn’t been able to keep his word, not really, because…

Well, because it’s Liam. Theo doesn’t really have a better explanation other than that.

“Yeah, well,” Scott mutters, looking away like he’s embarrassed at hearing his own words, “I was wrong about that, too.”

Theo’s not sure what he means, brow furrowing, but Scott doesn’t give him the chance to mull it over for long.

“Theo, if it wasn’t for you…” Scott blinks, seemingly caught by his own statement, “Well for one thing, Nolan would be dead. But for another, we never would have been half as successful as we’ve been hunting Monroe down. All of this...” He gestures at the map, at the discarded paper cranes full of strategies and tactics, at Alec’s rumpled bed on Theo’s pull-out couch, “Sometimes I think you don’t…”

He stops, eyes searching Theo’s face, which Theo can’t help nearly recoiling from; he’s not sure what the hell Scott might see since he has no idea what his own face is doing, blindsided as he’s feeling from Scott’s sudden pronouncement.

Finally Scott seems to get frustrated at Theo’s wide-eyed silence and his own inarticulateness, and drops his hands back to the table, looks at Theo hard, “Look, just...just don’t tell me I don’t have to apologize. I did, okay? I do.”

“Okay,” Theo says rotely, automatically.

Scott narrows his eyes, looking far from satisfied, but he’s interrupted by the sound of the front door rolling open. They both jump, having both missed the signs of someone approaching the door, and turn to look as Malia walks in, followed a few paces behind by Alec. She squints at them, seeing the signs of a clearly interrupted conversation or smelling whatever confused mess of scents they must be giving off, but then just rolls her eyes and visibly lets it go; apparently her ability to give a shit about personal drama was not much recharged by her run with Alec in the Preserve.

She rolls the door back shut behind Alec and then looks at Theo, tells him, “Alec’s ability to control the shift is much better. Good job doing whatever you did to him.”

Theo’s still feeling a little out at sea, so he just says, a little blankly, “Uh, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Malia replies, “Do you have anything to eat? I’m starving.”

“Should be half a rotisserie chicken in the fridge,” Theo tells her, actually feeling a little more steady as he does; surrendering his food to foraging McCall pack members is well-trod ground for him.

She grunts out a thanks and goes to retrieve it, leaving Alec shifting awkwardly from foot to foot a few feet away from the table, obviously with something on his mind and just as obviously not sure how to say it. Scott, clearly trying to better manage his sleep-deprivation-caused hair-trigger temper, waits patiently for him to work out whatever it is, but Theo isn’t feeling as generous.

“Spit it out, Alec, or we’re all going to catch your case of awkward,” Theo orders; Scott shoots him a disapproving look but it actually seems to help Alec, who’s spent the last three days getting used to Theo’s occasionally blunt approach to personnel management.

“Can I stay?” Alec blurts out finally, “I mean, I want to stay. Here. Can I—can I stay here?”

Theo raises an eyebrow and says, _are you asking me or him_ , just as Scott answers, slowly, “Like...here, in Theo’s apartment?”

Theo turns to give Scott a disbelieving look, thinking, _Jesus, he is out of it_ , just as Alec colors a bit and tries again.

“No, I mean with the pack. With your pack,” He says, steeling himself and looking Scott straight in the eyes, “I want to stay in Beacon Hills and be part of your pack.”

 _Huh_ , Theo thinks, looking at him appraisingly; he’d expected something along those lines, but he’d figured it take Alec a few more days at least to work up to it. Scott, on the other hand, just blinks again—he desperately needs to go home and get some sleep, it’s almost painful to watch him—and then he’s thankfully rescued by Malia, coming out of the kitchen with the full container of chicken held in one hand as she pulls pieces of it off with the other and stuffs them in her mouth. Because, really, Theo thinks, smirking, who needs plates or basic table manners?

“Scott already assumed you were, he told Shohreh when we were with her and everything,” Malia tells Alec, oblivious or uncaring of the way that Alec’s scent goes hot with a confused mix of disbelief and shy gratitude, “You’re on mashed potato duty for Thanksgiving next week, by the way. Ms. McCall sent out assignments to all the pack members but you don’t have a phone yet, so she told Theo to tell you.”

“What?” Theo interjects, then realizes he’d left his phone on the table when he’d went upstairs with Derek.

He stretches over to retrieve it and does indeed see a text from Ms. McCall: _You’re on stuffing. A LOT of stuffing, I was clearly drunk when I offered to host. Tell Alec he’s responsible for mashed potatoes._

“You’re responsible for mashed potatoes,” He tells Alec, specifically so that he can text back, _I told him_ , and be one-hundred percent telling the truth; crossing Ms. McCall when she’d agreed to host Thanksgiving for twenty-five people seemed unlikely to end well.

Scott still seems stuck on maybe having co-opted Alec before he was ready to be co-opted, “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be a jerk or anything, I just thought—”

Alec cuts him off, quickly and like he’s maybe afraid Scott might change his mind if he’s allowed to finish; Theo sympathizes, “No! I mean, no. You didn’t...it wasn’t—it wasn’t a bad assumption.” He smiles at Scott, tentatively and from beneath a ducked brow, “Um, thanks.”

“Welcome to the Beacon Hills pack,” Scott replies, a little helplessly.

Theo rolls his eyes and leaves them grinning dorkily at each other and goes up to take a shower. When he comes back down, the bones of the rotisserie chicken have been picked clean and the container deposited on his counter; Malia, remembering the last time Theo had smacked Liam upside the back of the head after he’d thrown out a perfectly good set of chicken bones, Theo saying, _I was keeping those for stock, dumbass_. Scott and Malia are gone, hopefully to go pass out for at least twelve hours. Alec is sitting on his pull-out couch bed—which he’s made, weirdly—and reading one of the books off of Theo’s shelves; a history of the politics leading up to World War I, sent to Theo by the alpha of the Kenwood pack after he’d found out about his and Theo’s shared interest in military history.

Theo doubts he’s absorbing much; he’s still giving off such a distracted aura of giddy surprise and elation from being officially adopted by the McCall pack that he’s practically vibrating. Resisting the urge to smile at him, Theo gets his attention and gestures upstairs.

“Go take a shower and then we’ll run to the mall, get you some clothes and a phone. I don’t plan on being your carrier pigeon.”

Some of Alec’s contentment gets replaced by a spike of panic—a mall meant people, and a _lot_ of them, even midday on a weekday—but he swallows and nods, scoots off the couch and heads upstairs. Now Theo _really_ has to resist smiling at him; apparently last night’s dinner with Mason and Nolan, and today’s run with Malia, had built up his confidence.

They get back from the mall a few hours later, Alec now armed with a full wardrobe, a laptop, and a shiny new smartphone of his own, all courtesy of Peter Hale. He spends the ride back to the apartment pestering Theo until he unlocks and hands over his own phone so that Alec can copy over all of the pack’s numbers; Theo very narrowly resists the urge to comment when Alec starts regularly texting someone and Theo looks over and sees _Nolan_ on the notifications. Instead he leaves Alec sat at his table setting up his new laptop and goes to put away the groceries they’d also picked up.

He’s just finished when his phone buzzes. He fishes it out of his pocket and frowns when he sees Mason’s name on the text notification; it’s not that Mason _doesn’t_ text him, he just usually doesn’t do it directly. Interest piqued and a little worried, he thumbs open the message: _Liam won’t talk to us about whatever happened with Scott, but Corey had to keep reminding him to cool it at practice, and now he’s refusing to leave the field and taking it out on a bunch of innocent lacrosse balls._

Theo blows out a long breath, then replies: _I’ll go talk to him._ Then, a little mischievously, he adds, _If you guys want to come hang out here, I bet Alec wouldn’t mind the company_.

He slips his phone back into his pocket and heads back out into the main room, waves at Alec until he looks up from his new laptop, “I’ve got to step out for a bit, but I think Nolan and the others are going to come do homework here for a little while, if that’s okay?”

Alec’s clearly no James Bond; he colors some and then stammers, “Oh, okay. No—I mean yes!—that’s okay, that’s no...that’s not a problem.”

Theo swallows back a laugh, “Great. See you in a few hours, then.”

By the time he gets to the school, it’s getting dark, and Liam’s beat-up old SUV is one of the only cars left in the lot. Theo parks next to it and gets out, sharpens his senses a bit until he catches the hard _twock_ of a lacrosse ball slamming in to the back of a net, the whistle of Liam’s stick through the air. Working his jaw a bit, Theo quickly scans the rest of the school to get some basic sense for how close other students or teachers might be—not very, the night chilly for California—and then tucks his hands into his pockets and heads for the lacrosse field.

Liam must either hear or smell him coming, because before Theo’s even entered his field of vision he snaps, “What, did Scott order you to come check up on me?”

He punctuates his accusation with a hard throw, and Theo can hear the sound of some of the net’s reinforced threads snapping under the force; if Liam isn’t careful, he’s going to pitch a ball straight through it.

“Actually no,” Theo counters easily, refusing to rise to the bait, “Mason was worried.”

“Mason should mind his own business,” Liam fumes, and throws another shot; it hits a different section of net, thankfully, but Theo hears more threads snap.

Liam scoops up another ball and goes to throw it but Theo whips out a hand, grabs the top of his stick before he can, forcefully holding it in place, “Don’t be a dick to Mason just because you’re pissed at Scott. He’s your friend and he’s worried about you.”

Liam bares his teeth at him and his eyes flicker gold for a beat, but just a beat. He jerks on the stick, trying to yank it out of Theo’s grip, but when Theo doesn’t let go he abruptly releases it, stalks away a few feet with his back to Theo. Theo lowers the stick to his side and shakes the ball out of the net, keeps hold of it in case Liam tries to grab it again.

“What Scott said was _bullshit_ ,” Liam snarls, turning to look at Theo as if daring him to argue.

“He means well,” Theo tries, knowing it’s going to be inadequate but needing to say it anyway, because Scott _does_.

“Oh, fuck that,” Liam responds angrily, cutting a hand through the air like he’s physically rejecting Theo’s statement, “Acting like me and the others are some kind of snot-nosed kids that he needs to shelter—” Theo goes to open his mouth, to counter _that’s not why he said that, that’s not why he asked me to keep you out of it_ , but Liam rolls onward before he can, “—getting pissed at you when you’re the _only_ reason he’s even managed to keep on top of that psychotic bitch.”

Theo blinks, thrown, “What?”

“Oh, please, don’t act all humble just to make him look better,” Liam orders, like Theo is deliberately playing dumb rather than legitimately confused.

Theo decides to just drop the whole line of inquiry because he has no idea what Liam means and therefore no idea how to respond to it, “Scott already apologized to me, Liam. And he would have even before you started tearing into him, once he’d actually had a chance to get a full night’s rest for the first time in nearly a week and realized what he’d said.”

Liam looks taken aback for a few seconds, like the idea of Scott owning up to his own behavior that quickly is derailing Liam’s attempt to be righteously indignant. Then he sneers and jerks away from Theo, crossing his arms over his chest. He kicks at the ground beneath him a few times, digging up a few clumps of dirt and grass as he does.

Then he blows out a long, frustrated breath and turns back to Theo, “I don’t get why you’re defending him. You’re the one he started yelling at for no reason.”

 _He had a reason_ , Theo thinks, but doesn’t say. Instead he repeats, “Because he _means well_.” Then he blows out a frustrated breath of his own and adds, “He’s just like the rest of us, okay, Liam? He fucks up sometimes.”

Liam studies him for a few seconds, but he can’t seem to hold onto his anger—which had been mostly on Theo’s behalf, apparently—when Theo doesn’t share it. But he’s also not willing to entirely let it go.

“Yeah, maybe,” He allows, grudgingly, and holds out his hand, “Can I have my stick back, now?”

Theo holds it out of reach, “That depends. Are you physically capable of throttling it back so that I don’t have to go find a sporting goods store at ass o’clock to replace the net before someone can wonder what the hell happened to it?”

“Yes, _mom_ ,” He sneers; Theo holds out on handing the stick over a few seconds longer in punishment, but then does.

Liam very deliberately scoops up a ball and throws it at half his usual, human speed. Theo rolls his eyes and mouths _drama queen_ at him, but doesn’t try to reclaim the stick or otherwise interfere; the exercise would help burn off the last of Liam’s lingering frustration.

Liam is down to his last ball, poised in the basket and about to throw it, when he suddenly adds, “He still shouldn’t have said what he said to you.”

Theo snorts, thinking, _pot, kettle_ , “Right. Because you’ve never made a mistake when you’ve been tired, or sad, or angry.”

That lands; Liam’s shot misses the net by a good ten feet. His scent tanks, just goes hot and sour with a rush of shame, and he plants his stick in the ground and drops his forehead onto it, grinds it back and forth. Theo suppresses his wince and his instant instinct to offer some comment that might alleviate Liam’s guilt at his overreaction to Scott’s own, admitted, overreaction: like Scott, Liam is just like the rest of them; he fucks up sometimes. And just like Scott and the rest of them, he was going to have to live with it.

“Fuck,” Liam finally sighs, summing up the whole situation succinctly.

Theo reaches forward until he can pry up Liam’s forehead, make Liam look at him, “Just go talk to him, alright? He’s probably feeling just as shitty about the whole situation, but he’s already worried about being an overbearing ass, he’ll wait until you come to him.”

“Or until Malia gets sick of his sulking and kicks him out until he fixes it,” Liam adds, smiling slightly as he says it.

“Or that,” Theo agrees. He stops, looks around the night-dark school campus, then back at Liam, “You good? I might as well start my patrol from here if so.”

“Can I come?” Liam asks, then immediately adds, defensive, at Theo’s long-suffering look, “I’m not trying to be difficult!”

“You keep saying that,” Theo tells him, “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Liam makes a face at him; _ha, ha, very funny_ , “Look, I get why you and Scott have tried to keep me and Mason and Corey and Nolan out of it.” At Theo’s skeptical look he insists, “I do! We all do, alright, it’s not like you guys are the masters of freakin’ subtlety about it. We’ve talked about it.”

“Then why did you go off on Scott earlier?” Theo asks, now genuinely confused.

“Because he started yelling at you for no reason,” Liam repeats slowly, the _duh_ strongly implied; Theo just stares at him, “Look, whatever. We’ve acknowledged that I shouldn’t have yelled at Scott.”

“ _I_ acknowledged that. I don’t remember you doing so,” Theo interrupts, but he primarily does it to be an ass and Liam clearly realizes that; he rolls his eyes and attempts to sock Theo in the arm, though Theo dodges easily.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Liam says, loudly, once it becomes clear Theo isn’t going to just let Liam hit him, “I get it, but whatever you guys try and do to protect us, it’s still our fight, too.”

The humor of the situation falls away some for Theo, at that; Liam’s right.

“I’m not going to like, insist on going with the hunting party or anything,” Liam assures him, “I’ll keep going to class and graduate like you all are so weirdly fixated on—” Theo mouths _weirdly fixated on_ , incredulous; what the hell, Liam, “—but I want to help, okay? Like last night. It shouldn’t all be on you like it has been.”

 _That is...literally why I’m here_ , Theo thinks, baffled; why exactly did Liam think Scott was permitting Theo to stay in Beacon Hills, otherwise? But Liam just steamrolls on.

“So let me go on patrol with you tonight,” Liam finishes quietly, not insisting or demanding so much as wrapping up his case; the prosecution resting.

It’s been too much of a weird goddamned day, like an emotional rollercoaster that Theo’s spent getting whiplashed back and forth between the McCall pack’s various members and traumas; he can’t be expected to make good decisions right now. Theo sighs, closing his eyes so that he doesn’t have to meet Liam’s steady gaze—when did all of this character growth happen, Theo wonders, it couldn’t all have been in the last half hour—and then he throws up his arms, says _fine_ , like he’s surrendering to the universe, opens his eyes in time to catch Liam’s victorious grin.

“Clean up your stuff and let’s go, then,” Theo tells him, falling back into the at least familiar ground of barking out orders in an attempt to find steady ground, feeling like the tectonics of his relationship with Liam have shifted some in ways he’s still not clear on, stood in this field with just the two of them.

He waits while Liam gathers up the lacrosse balls from the net, chases down the one that went wide, stuffs them in his bag and runs that and his stick back to his car. Liam jogs back over to him afterwards smelling excited and something else, something darker, weightier, that Theo can’t quite put his finger on; he abandons all pretense of trying to, and just returns Liam’s seemingly-helpless grin, equally unable to stop himself.

And so Theo runs his patrol that night with Liam at his back. He runs it feeling Liam’s heat just inches off his shoulder-blade as Liam keeps up with him, effortlessly.

\---

By the time Thanksgiving rolls around a week later, Monroe and whatever is left of her hunters have completely dropped off the map. Literally—Theo hasn’t had any updates to add to his giant wall map from his contacts, his patrols, the hunting party, or the McCall pack allies in nearly five days.

Theo stands in front of his wall map the morning of Thanksgiving anyway, black marker pressed against his lips and phone in hand as he idly trades texts back and forth with some of the members of their allied packs, Lydia on his couch behind him—Alec had gotten into the habit of stealing Theo’s bed after Theo got up, so it’d been free for the taking—with her laptop in her lap and Stiles sprawled out next to her, his toes tucked under her thigh. The two of them had flown home for fall break and had been spending most of their time at Derek’s, but Lydia had gotten into the habit of coming two floors down to Theo’s in the morning to raid his kitchen for actual food, since Derek’s cabinets are full of nothing but protein bars and his fridge nothing but expired condiments.

Theo genuinely wants to give him the benefit of the doubt that the sad state of his kitchen is due to his constantly being on the road with Scott, but he’s fairly certain it’s just Derek’s usual culinary M.O.

Lydia had shown up an hour or so ago and helped herself to the last of Theo’s steel-cut oats and plain greek yogurt—Theo making an absent note to pick up more when he checks in with Jun-hei later—and then had pulled out her laptop to start running numbers and models, looking for something that the pack might have missed in the shitshow that had been Yreka. She and Theo had been half-heartedly trading theories back and forth, both knowing that the information they were working with was unhelpfully stale but both feeling compelled to do _something_ , when Stiles had stumbled in, following Lydia—as he’d started doing once he’d figured out where she’d been disappearing off to—and making a beeline for Theo’s coffee-maker.

His now-empty cup sits before him on the coffee table as he lays flat on his back and tosses a stress ball shaped like George Washington’s head, retrieved from one of Theo’s bookshelves and with _GW Center for Student Engagement_ printed along its side, up into the air over and over again. He’d joined in the theorizing to a certain extent, but seemed unwilling to dignify their chances of figuring anything out sans new information with any great amount of enthusiasm; his most recent contributions were much more peanut-gallery than actually helpful.

“This is pointless,” He finally interjects, interrupting Lydia and Theo rehashing the murder of the Yreka refugee pack for the _nth_ time, “Can’t you like, make friends with another unsuspecting supermarket attendant, get us some actionable intelligence?”

This he directs at Theo, throwing the stress ball in his hand at Theo’s head as he says it. Theo catches it one-handed and whips it back towards Stiles without looking, nailing him between the eyes and causing him to yelp and flail his way off the couch with a loud _thump_. Lydia, clearly at peace with her decision to enter into a relationship with an occasional giant man-child like Stiles, just lifts her laptop out of the way of Stiles’ Scooby-Doo legs and otherwise doesn’t react.

“He’s not wrong,” She agrees reluctantly—Theo pettily appreciates her unwillingness to say _he’s right_ —and closes her laptop with a sigh, slides it onto the coffee table and stretches, “Besides, we need to start cooking for tonight.”

She prods Stiles with a perfectly pedicured toe as she says this, Stiles still struggling his way upright from between the coffee table and couch. At her words, he groans and goes back flat, arms covering his face; Ms. McCall had been conducting Thanksgiving preparations like a military exercise over the past week, her expression a little manic the few times that Theo had seen her, which was only fair considering that in addition to the usual fifteen suspects—the pack plus Ms. McCall, Argent, the Sheriff, and Parrish—dinner would also include Mason’s, Liam’s, and Nolan’s parents, along with Lydia’s mom, Malia’s dad, Agent McCall and, weirdly, Peter.

“Do you have nutmeg?” Lydia suddenly asks, glancing up at him; she doesn’t look down when Stiles wraps a careful hand around her ankle, just flexes her bare foot against Stiles’ ribcage, the movement casual and proprietary and intimate.

Theo narrows his eyes at her innocent expression, sensing a trap. He does have nutmeg—he has a whole cabinet full of poorly-organized spices, in fact—but he’s unsure why Lydia would be interested.

Lydia rolls her eyes at his suspicious look, “My mom’s kitchen is pretty much purely decorative and Derek’s kitchen is, well”—she pauses and gestures to herself and Stiles as proof of what Derek’s kitchen is like—“Stiles was assigned sweet potatoes and I’m in charge of the apple and cherry pies.”

Theo knows this, because Stiles had whined incessantly to the entire group text about the implied insult of being assigned a dish that is, it’s true, very difficult to screw up, at least until Ms. McCall had sent back _Christmas 2009_ with zero additional context and his complaints had all mysteriously dried up. Theo also knows that the easiest way to win a battle of wills with Lydia is to surrender, so he drops the black marker in his hand back into its holder—a mug with a panoramic picture of Bear Lake on it, brought back by the hunting party and filled with a veritable rainbow of markers—on the nearby bookshelf, which is nearing overfull thanks to the mug and other random gifts from the pack, and doesn’t try to protest.

“I don’t have pie pans,” Theo tells her, like he’d been offering his kitchen to her rather than being volun-told that he’d be surrendering it.

She smirks like she knows exactly what he’s doing, “I brought enough. They’re upstairs with the rest of the ingredients in Derek’s fridge.”

Theo realizes in that instant that commandeering his kitchen must have been her plan all along—she wouldn’t have made the mistake of thinking that Derek has pie-making implements, since Derek doesn’t have a _toaster_ —and he sighs, goes to head upstairs to take a shower.

“Write down anything that you need from the store, will you?” He yells down to her as he climbs his impractical staircase, ignoring Stiles shouting _Twizzlers!_ from his place on the floor, “I have to go by Raley’s anyway to check in with my _unsuspecting supermarket attendant_.”

He ignores Stiles’ cackle at that and showers quickly, then throws on jeans, a warm sweater, and boots; the weather had been decidedly cold and wet for the past several days. He wakes up Alec as he goes, harasses him into the shower while asking if he needs anything from the store. When he comes back downstairs Derek has appeared and joined Lydia and Stiles in his kitchen, the three of them dividing up ingredients from various paper bags, laying out pans and cutting boards, moving around and with each other with ease.

Derek for his part keeps pressing gentle, fleeting touches to the small of Lydia’s back, the curve of Stiles’ hip, keeps leaning closer than he really needs to as they pass him to brush his nose over their necks; while he’d done all right with them on the other side of the country, he’s clearly savoring having them close enough to touch, to smell. Theo resists the urge to smile softly at the sight, silently snagging the list that Lydia had written him on a torn-off piece of paper bag and leaving the three of them to it, oddly unbothered by the fact that he’s essentially been evicted from his own kitchen.

Later, after the five of them have spent hours running up and down the floors between Theo’s and Derek’s apartments, Derek’s oven ironically seeing use after all since all of them but Alec and Derek—who’d been assigned, quote, _all the booze_ —had needed to bake things, the five of them pile into Derek’s Toyota to head over to the McCall’s. They miraculously manage to fit all the dishes into the back of the car, though Stiles, Alec, and Theo spend the ride hunched over the backseat making sure no dishes overflow or other culinary disasters ensue as Derek—who’d never really learned to drive like a normal person rather than someone who had spent an admittedly large portion of their adult life on the run—navigates Beacon Hills’ holiday-traffic-clogged streets. Lydia, sat in the front seat with the box of liquor between her feet, just smirks at Theo in the rearview as Stiles snarks Derek for his wannabe-Nascar style and then yelps as Derek deliberately takes a tight turn, making him—and Theo and Alec, too, thanks, _Derek_ —scramble to keep the dishes level.

They’d settled on Derek’s car as their singular vehicle, since it was larger than both Theo’s and Lydia’s and between all the attendees parking was already going to be a nightmare. When they arrive the McCall driveway and immediate street parking is already almost full, so Derek rolls down a few houses until he can park in front of the Woodrow’s, the windows of their house dark; they’d gone to Boston to visit family for Thanksgiving, Theo remembers hearing.

Scott and Liam pop out of the McCall house to help carry the food in, Lydia slapping the back of Liam’s hand when he goes to lift the aluminum foil covering one of the cherry pies after she’s handed it off to him. Liam yelps, grinning, and lets the foil fall back into place, then turns so that he’s walking backwards to talk to them as Scott, Theo, Lydia, Alec, and Derek finish unloading the car and follow him. He’s chattering a mile a minute, already high on good food and good company, and Theo finds his enthusiasm infectious, can’t help smiling and joking back.

He follows Ms. McCall’s instructions once they get inside as to where to set his armful of dishes and then grabs a drink, heads to the living room where Mason, Corey, and Nolan are pawing through board games, clearly trying to decide which one Malia is most likely to hilariously interpret as she looks on curiously. Alec drops down onto the couch next to him and grins before turning to opine, coloring lightly, when Nolan holds up _Monopoly_ questioningly and asks for Alec’s thoughts.

Since there’s no chance in hell that any of the McCall rooms can hold the full group, dinner winds up being a casual, sit-where-you-can-find-a-spot affair. The adults end up colonizing the dining room, their conversation and laughter getting progressively louder as they work their way through the various bottles of booze that Derek had brought with him. The rest of the pack sprawls out around the living room, either actively participating in or actively heckling the various board games being played. Corey nearly laughs himself sick at one point during Apples to Apples when Malia bewilderingly judges a round, her questions to Scott about the various cards infinitely funnier than the pack’s attempted explanations.

Around ten, Mason’s, Liam’s, and Nolan’s parents, along with Lydia’s mom and Malia’s dad, head out, arms loaded with dishes and tupperware containers filled with leftovers. Their various offspring stay put; _Giant Pack Slumber Party: the Sequel_ , as Theo has taken to mentally calling it, had been planned earlier that week, on the condition that the dishes be done and all Thanksgiving-related messes cleaned up, compliance to be judged by Ms. McCall. Scott, alpha that he is, manages to wrangle the various pack members into clean up duty with relative ease, half assigned to packing the leftovers into tupperware and the other half assigned to an ad-hoc assembly-line of dishwashing; Mason and Corey washing, Alec rinsing, Nolan drying, and Scott putting things away as the only one present with any idea where things go.

Theo snaps a lid onto the last of his set of tupperware and hands it off to Lydia, who’s playing a no-holds-barred game of Tetris with the McCall fridge to get all the containers to fit. He leaves her arguing with Stiles over technique—Stiles has a theory about stacking that nearly ends in tragedy, from which he’s only rescued by Derek’s supernatural reflexes—and heads outside, the cold air on his overheated skin a relief. He’s sat on the front porch, leaned back on his elbows and eyes closed, just taking a break from all the commotion, when the door opens and someone steps out, accompanied by a brief burst of noise.

It’s Liam, which Theo knows without opening his eyes; even if his scent wasn’t unmistakable—at least to Theo—Theo could pick his heartbeat out of a crowd with ease. He drops down next to Theo with a contented sigh and then lays back, the warmth of him bleeding over into Theo even with the scant inches between them. Theo cracks open an eye to watch him and Liam grins at him before turning his head towards the sky, towards the scattering of stars visible through breaks in the tufts of clouds drifting by.

After a few long, slow minutes spent in companionable silence, Liam takes a deep, full breath, exhales it out and then announces, “This was a good night.”

Theo tilts a look at him and Liam meets his eyes, grins again, then turns his head back forward.

“I wasn’t sure we would get to have nights like this again, after everything,” He adds breezily, like it’s a passing observation, but Theo frowns. Liam makes a face at whatever expression he sees Theo making and reaches a hand out, pushes Theo’s face away like he can push away Theo’s— _completely rational!_ —concern, “I didn’t mean it like _that_.”

Theo’s a little distracted by Liam’s hand on his face but he rallies, ducks his chin out of Liam’s grip as he says, “What _did_ you mean, then?”

But Liam’s distracted himself now and doesn’t respond. He rolls over onto his side and tries to grab Theo’s face again, the endeavor turning into something of a half-assed wrestling match as Theo intercepts his wrists and holds them away, dropping down onto his back as he does so with a slight _oof_. Liam scrambles closer as he twists and turns his trapped wrists to try and free them, tries to get past Theo’s guard. He ends up sprawled half on top of Theo by the time he gives up, his chin digging pointedly into Theo’s sternum as he sobers, frowning contemplatively into the middle-distance. Theo, his hands still wrapped around Liam’s wrists and feeling more than a little lost from Liam’s mood-swings, thrown by his casual closeness, just lays still and waits, heart pounding centimeters from Liam’s chin.

“I just meant I wasn’t sure we’d get to have nights like this again, after everything,” He finally explains, a little helplessly, “You know what I mean?”

Theo studies him, Liam’s face close enough that Theo can feel his breath every time he exhales. His hands spasm on Liam’s wrists and he lets them go, suddenly realizing that he’d still been holding onto them. Problem is, he doesn’t know where to put them instead, leaves them hovering awkwardly in the air for a moment before he mentally rolls his eyes at himself and lets them drop to his sides, ignoring the split-second impulse to drop them onto Liam’s back.

“Yeah,” Theo agrees quietly, several seconds later than really makes sense but feeling compelled to say it anyway, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Liam gives him a half-smile, then sighs and uses the hands he has on Theo’s chest to push himself upright. Once standing, he shakes out his arms and then stretches, going up on his tiptoes and then dropping back down, Theo watching him from his place on the ground, still feeling whiplashed from the brief interaction.

“We should head back inside,” He tells Theo, nudging him in the leg with one foot, “Scott and Stiles are still working their way through Malia’s movie education and the Avengers is up next.”

Theo bats away Liam’s prodding foot and rolls to his feet, follows him back inside. They walk back in to everyone getting ready to settle in for the night, people popping in and out of bathrooms and bedrooms as they get changed into more comfortable clothes, set up air mattresses, including a new one spread out in the absolute last bit space in the living room for Alec. Derek and Scott once again move the oak table in the dining room to the side so that Corey and Mason can set up their air mattress, intercepting Liam before it can turn into Liam versus table, Round Two. Ms. McCall, Argent, the Sheriff, Parrish, and Peter relocate to the kitchen during all the commotion, a tupperware container full of leftover pie and forks on the table between them; Theo grins when he sees it on his way through, mimes zipping his lips when the Sheriff raises a clearly challenging eyebrow at him.

He heads back into the living room and claims the scant space left on his and Liam’s air mattress, Corey and Mason piling onto it as well. Scott and Malia take the loveseat, and through some black magic that Theo doesn’t fully grasp, Derek, Stiles, and Lydia manage to arrange themselves on one end of the couch while successfully leaving Nolan a sizable space on the other.

No one lasts through the full movie. Parrish and the Sheriff head out halfway through, Parrish driving the Sheriff home since he—like every other supernatural, to their ongoing chagrin—can’t get drunk. Peter follows shortly after, an expression on his face like he’s completely bemused by the fact that he’d just passed a pleasant evening. Ms. McCall and Argent head to bed once they leave, and the rest of the pack fall like dominoes shortly after, falling asleep one by one.

Scott wakes up at some point and starts sending everyone to their assigned sleeping areas, ignoring their grumbling and complaints. Mason and Corey stumble their way off of Liam and Theo’s air mattress and to their own the next room over. Alec, as the one with a single-sized air mattress, just mumbles something incomprehensible and ignores everyone, falling immediately back to sleep. Derek, Stiles, and Lydia head up to the guest bedroom and leave the couch to Nolan, who doesn’t bother to stretch the sheet Ms. McCall had handed him earlier over the cushions, just tips over onto his borrowed pillow and buries himself beneath an _UCLA School of Nursing_ throw. Malia stands by the stairs, blinking slowly and swaying some as she waits for Scott to finish checking the doors and turning off the remaining lights, and then the two of them head upstairs to his room.

Half an hour later, Theo’s still awake, exhausted but somehow unwilling to go to sleep just yet. He stretches his senses out, tags each of the pack one by one: Nolan and Alec, both deeply asleep and nightmare-free just a few feet away; Scott and Malia, the pleasant, earthy mix of wolf and coyote filling Scott’s room; Derek and Stiles with Lydia cradled in between them, Derek’s breathing deep and even in contrast to his usual light sleep; Corey with his nose pressed between Mason’s shoulder-blades; Ms. McCall with her head on Argent’s shoulder and her hand over his heart.

And Liam, stretched out beside him on his stomach, face turned towards Theo with one hand resting easily between them. Theo tips his head to the side so he can study Liam’s sleep-slack expression; he thinks of Liam earlier, saying _I wasn’t sure we’d get to have nights like this again_ , and closes his eyes, takes a deep breath to fill his lungs with the heady smell of the McCall pack and then exhales it out, thinks of Liam asking, _you know what I mean?_

 _Yeah_ , Theo thinks, relaxing his senses and feeling himself already starting to drift off, letting one of his hands come to rest just a hair's’ breadth from Liam’s, _I know what you mean_.

\---

Ostensibly, Alec has his own apartment, given to him by Derek the day after Thanksgiving and across the hall from Theo’s, but in reality, Theo comes downstairs four days out of seven to find Alec asleep on his couch.

The first night that it happens Theo actually wakes up, jolted to consciousness by the sound of a key in his lock. He realizes it’s Alec immediately afterwards, but his pulse stays high; was something _wrong_? Concern starting to rocket upwards and still half-asleep, Theo rolls out of bed and starts down the World’s Most Impractical Staircase just in time to see Alec rolling his front door back shut.

“What is it?” Theo demands as he hits the main floor, senses already stretching out to check the rest of the building.

Alec jumps and then whips around. He catches Theo’s alert expression and his eyes widen, his hands immediately coming up, palms outward, in the universal sign for _calm_ , “Nothing! Nothing’s wrong, sorry, I just…can I sleep here tonight?”

When Theo just stares at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, Alec flushes, one hand coming up to scratch at the back of his neck.

“Look, I know. It’s just…” He pauses, clearly embarrassed, and then finishes all in a rush, “It’s just really _quiet_ , alone in my apartment.”

That deflates some of Theo’s incredulous irritation; he remembers that exact feeling from when he’d first moved into his own apartment after spending the week at the McCall house immediately post the hospital showdown. He groans and covers his face with his hands, then sighs and drops them.

“Fine,” He mutters, “C’mon, help me get it pulled out.”

Alec tries to insist he can just sleep on it as-is, but Theo just glares at him and throws the set of sheets he’d retrieved from the linen closet directly at Alec’s face, makes Alec help him get the couch pulled-out and properly outfitted. He heads back upstairs just as Alec gets settled, and by the time he hits the top of the stairs, Alec is back out. Theo snorts, amused in spite of himself, and flops back into bed, is asleep again himself almost immediately.

It happens a few more times that week—not every night, but often enough—that Theo nearly gets used to it. He hears the key in his lock and just huffs, doesn’t bother getting up when he realizes it’s Alec. Instead, the next day he relocates one of his extra pillows from the linen closet to the couch and starts leaving a folded blanket over the back, just listens to the soft sounds of Alec pulling it off and unfolding it, settling down underneath it. Once he hears the sound of Alec’s heartbeat leveling out with sleep, he finds he can drift back off, too.

The fourth or fifth time it happens, Theo brings him out a cup of coffee the next morning, Alec blearily sitting up on the couch, the blanket falling away from him as he takes it, and comments, “You have a _perfectly_ good bed across the hall. I know this, because I had to carry it up those goddamn stairs.”

He’d done it with Derek’s help and under the supervision of Lydia, who’d heard about Theo and Liam’s misadventure with Theo’s mattress—from Liam, of course—and stuck around to make sure her home-decorating plans went perfectly this time. The furnishing of Alec’s apartment had essentially followed the same pattern as Theo’s, though Alec’s initial concern about not being able to afford the place had involved much more blushing and stuttering than Theo’s needling commentary on Derek’s choice in architecture. But after Derek had effortlessly overrode his objections with exactly the same dry look he’d given Theo, the McCall pack had, once again, piled into their various cars and trooped back out to the Sacramento IKEA off I-80.

Strangely enough though, and to Theo’s indignation, Lydia had been more _laissez-faire_ with Alec’s furniture choices, essentially letting him and the rest of the pack run wild through the store.

“Why does he get to pick out his own furniture?” Theo had asked, a little insulted.

Lydia had given him a _supremely_ unimpressed look, “Because you’re just like Derek. If we’d left you alone to pick out your own stuff, you would have come back with a bare mattress, a side table with a single chair, and a single set of dishes.”

Theo had wanted to disagree, he really had, but that was maybe only a _slight_ exaggeration. Anyway, it had meant that by the time that they’d picked up everything Alec needed at IKEA and swung by the furniture store to pick up a mattress and couch—a pull-out, once again, but more for practical purposes than because Alec was expected to house bleeding pack members—Alec had picked out a whole set of roughly matching furniture with the pack’s help. They’d assembled it all that night—Scott, Derek, Lydia, and Theo overseeing Liam, Corey, Mason, and Stiles pointedly—and had hauled up the mattress before everyone left.

Alec, sat on his couch the fourth or fifth time he sneaks into Theo’s apartment—or tries to, anyway, since he always inevitably wakes Theo up when he does it—just colors and mutters, “I know.”

Theo lets it go. For one thing, from Alec’s hunched posture and ducked brow, he’s being hard enough on himself as is, and for another, Theo doesn’t actually mind. In fact, he notices that the nights that Alec crashes on his couch are the nights that he sleeps the best, his nightmares—sometimes of his sister and Josh and Tracey, sometimes of Nolan’s attack; sometimes, now, of Theo’s imagination’s best guest at the attack of Alec—fading as soon as Alec falls back asleep, the sound and smell of him soothing something otherwise ragged in Theo.

But Theo, somehow, doesn’t draw the connection between the two for an embarrassingly long time.

He spends the weeks after Alec comes to Beacon Hills, after Thanksgiving, continuing Alec’s training and trying to reestablish a bead on Monroe and her hunters. Alec’s control, already improved enough that Theo had felt comfortable taking him to Thanksgiving at the McCall house in the first place, continues to grow, to the extent that Theo not only takes him with him on some of Theo’s patrols, but starts giving him his own. It allows Theo to stagger them, mix them up further, expand his area of coverage out a little past Beacon County, which nets them some interesting finds; no live hunters, but traces of them.

 _Huh_ , he thinks, toeing idly at a handful of shell casings he’d found in a warehouse just outside Beacon County. Neither Monroe nor her hunters had been there in a while, but they _had_ been there. Theo texts the address to the Sheriff and Parrish and heads back to his apartment, adds it to his map.

He also introduces Alec to his contacts as his cousin, recently moved to town. Macey immediately takes to him, sending him home with a slice of apple pie—apparently Alec’s favorite, who knew?—on a plate bundled in plastic wrap. Pedro’s always happy to have another willing ear for stories about his hunting dogs, and Jun-hei just looks at Alec appraisingly for a few long seconds before shrugging and sticking out a hand. All in all, Alec’s addition to the McCall pack ups to two the number of supernaturals dedicated full-time to keeping an eye on Beacon Hills, and it settles something in Theo that he hadn’t realized was restless.

But as settled as he might get, he never gets totally free—and likely never will—of his nightmares. Some nights he still wakes up gasping, drenched in sweat and with hands twisted in his sheets, sometimes clawed, sometimes not. Those are the nights that, once a few weeks have passed and he’s confident enough that Alec will be fine on his own, Theo picks back up his infrequent habit of witching hour patrols; of loping from pack member house to pack member house in his full-wolf form, searching out sleep-slow heartbeats and sleep-warm scents, wrapping them around himself.

He always tries to make it back before Alec’s likely to wake up—he doesn’t know if it’s because he doesn’t want to admit that it’s happening at all or just because he has no desire to talk about it—and most nights he manages it, but one night—morning—he comes back, near-stumbling with exhaustion from being awake for nearly thirty-six hours, to find Alec in his kitchen. He gives Theo a searching look but doesn’t comment, just asks him if he wants coffee. Theo just blinks at him blankly for a few seconds and then declines, about-faces and heads upstairs to fall into bed; he doesn’t give it any further thought, but Alec must.

He must, because the next night that Theo’s nightmares take a turn for the worst, but before he can wake up gasping and shivering and unable to get back to sleep, he’s woken up by something else.

At first the thinks it must be Alec, coming to sleep on Theo’s couch, and he’s almost grateful; he’s not sure he’ll be able to get back to sleep, but having the sound and smell of Alec downstairs might at least help him _rest_. But the heartbeat is wrong, and the scent...Theo’s eyes snap open and he rolls over just in time to see Liam finish cresting the World’s Most Impractical Staircase.

Theo squints at him, wondering if he’s imagining things. But Liam just makes his way over to the bed and flops down onto it, Theo having to scoot over quickly to avoid Liam colliding with him.

“Liam, what…?” Theo asks groggily.

“Alec called me,” Liam answers shortly, his hands fumbling beneath him as he executes one of the least graceful maneuvers Theo’s ever seen to wrestle the covers out from underneath himself so he can slip under them, “Now shut up and go back to sleep.”

Theo means to argue, but by the time he’s corralled his sleep-scattered and nightmare-fractured thoughts, he’s already asleep again. And he must sleep deeply, too, because he doesn’t remember anything until the next morning, when Liam shakes his shoulder gently and says, _I have to head to school, you alright now?_ Theo must mumble something because Liam snorts a laugh at him and his weight disappears from the bed.

An hour later, finally awake enough to grasp what happened, Theo stomps into Alec’s apartment, sees Alec leaning blearily against a counter in his kitchen, and demands, “What the _hell_ , Alec?”

The first thing out of Alec’s mouth is, “I’m not sorry.”

Theo stares at him incredulously, then accuses, “You called Liam to come babysit me.”

“Yeah, I did,” Alec agrees, and then louder, when Theo goes to speak, “Yeah, I _did_ , and I’m _not sorry_.”

“Alec!” Theo snaps, irritated; did Alec not see the absurdity of the situation, here?

“You weren’t sleeping!” Alec counters, “You haven’t slept a whole night through in a _week_.”

Theo pauses, taken aback. He hadn’t been tracking it that carefully—usually tried not to, since the knowledge that he wasn’t sleeping tended to make it worse—but, well. Alec being right about him not sleeping much this past week isn’t totally out of the realm of possibility. But Alec isn’t done.

“You want to know how I know that?” He asks, faux-brightly.

“How?” Theo snaps, humoring him.

“Because when you don’t sleep, _I_ don’t sleep,” Alec tells him, and the bottom immediately drops out of Theo’s stomach; _shit_. Alec sighs heavily when he sees the look on Theo’s face, walks his statement back some, “I mean, I do. I can. But your scent gets all—” He waves a hand around vaguely, “—and then if I’m awake enough I can hear your breathing, and, well…”

He trails off, but Theo doesn’t really need him to continue. Theo has survived his own nightmares, after all; he can imagine what his breathing must sound like during them.

“Nights like last night are the worst,” Alec confesses, then grimaces at him sympathetically, “Whatever you’re dreaming…”

But Theo doesn’t want to go there, says instead, a puzzle piece finally clicking into place, “That’s why you were coming in to sleep on my couch.”

Alec colors some but doesn’t deny it, “I mean, not at first; at first it really was too weird to be here by myself. But after awhile, yeah. It...it seemed to help.”

Theo exhales roughly and runs his hands down his face, “Why Liam?”

Alec gives him a speaking look but when Theo just raises his eyebrows he shrugs, “Thanksgiving, and a few of the other random nights he’s ended up staying for whatever reason. You sleep better. In fact, you sleep like a _baby_.”

Theo sighs, but doesn’t deny it, “You can’t call him again.”

“Why not?” Alec challenges, “It worked. You slept. _I_ slept.” He adds, like that might somehow sweeten the pot enough.

Theo snorts a laugh, gives him a dry look; _nice try_ , “He’s got school, and other shit to deal with. He can’t be driving over here in the middle of the night just because I have—” He cuts himself off before he can say _nightmares_ , says instead, “—trouble sleeping.”

Alec frowns at him, but Theo just shakes his head.

“Alec, I mean it,” Theo says seriously, “You can’t call him again.”

Then he blows out a breath, knowing he needs to give Alec _something_. Alec had waited a week to call Liam; it hadn’t been his first course of action and he clearly hadn’t done it lightly.

“Look, it gets bad again, and you feel like I’m not...handling it, or whatever,” He starts slowly, “You come yell at me, okay? And I’ll...figure it out.”

Alec makes a face, clearly not satisfied, “I think you’re being overly pedantic.”

Theo glares at him, “I’m being _realistic_. Liam driving twenty minutes in the middle of the night to come babysit me, _especially_ on school nights, is not a solution.”

Alec studies him, chewing his bottom lip. Then he huffs, but Theo relaxes some; that was a huff of unwilling compromise.

“Okay, but I’m warning you,” Alec says, “I’m keeping calling Liam in as my backup card.”

Theo rolls his eyes, but lets the subject drop. He heads back to his apartment to shower and down a cup of coffee before he heads on patrol, feeling better than he has in a week, and then feeling incredibly irritated by that fact. When he gets out of the shower and checks his phone, he’s got a text from Liam: _You done yelling at Alec yet?_

Theo huffs a laugh, replies: _Did you guess that or did he tell you?_

He can almost imagine Liam’s face when he gets Liam’s response: _Please. Like it wasn’t a given that you were going to be pissed._ Then, a few seconds later: _You shouldn’t be mad at him, he’s been worried._

Which means Alec had been talking to Nolan about it. Theo sighs: _I’m not mad._

Liam must find that hard enough to believe because he actually takes a picture of his skeptical expression to send to Theo. Theo barks out a laugh before he can stop himself: _I’m not._

 _Yeah, whatever_ , Liam replies dismissively: _We were going to come over to study after practice today, that okay?_

Theo frowns down at his phone: _When have you ever asked permission?_

 _You’re right_ , Liam texts back seconds later, _See you tonight_.

Theo locks his phone after Liam’s last message but doesn’t put it away immediately, just stays staring down at its blank screen for a long minute. The ember that Scott had ignited all those weeks ago flares some, and Theo finds the last of whatever annoyance, whatever embarrassment he’d still been harboring fading away.

Finally he slides his phone back into pocket and then goes to bang obnoxiously against Alec’s door; he’d make him run the full perimeter of Beacon County in punishment.

\---

By the third week of December, the McCall pack and their allies have started picking up hints of Monroe and her hunters again.

It starts with the hunters that Scott and Shohreh had managed to catch after that attack on Alec. It takes a while leaving them to the tender mercies of Agent McCall, but eventually some of them start to crack under the pressure. Most of their leads and information are unhelpfully stale, but even those tidbits help Theo, Argent, and some of their allies to piece together at least a good picture of what Monroe’s position had been _previously_ , which helps guide their guesses as to where she might be now, what she might be doing.

And then, a few days after the first one starts to break, one of the hunters actually has something worthwhile to give; one of Monroe’s suppliers of wolfsbane. Apparently she’d not only been running through the stuff like it was water, but she’d been experimenting with it. She’d needed a continuous—and large—supply of both common and rare strains of it as a result, and that—that gives Agent McCall, the Sheriff, and Argent just enough of a thread to pull that they could start identifying her whole supply line.

And once identified, it lets them start laying _traps_.

“I think we’re actually making progress,” Scott tells Theo one night after the hunting party returns from dropping off their latest catch; a batch of hunters that had come to pick up a delivery of specially-breed wolfsbane bulbs and been met with Scott and the hunting party, along with a handful of FBI agents, on their way out. He sounds a little bewildered by his own success. It’s very nearly endearing; Theo has to fight back the urge to smile.

Theo had gotten into the habit of meeting Scott and the others on their returns to get initial updates while they were still fresh in their minds, and so he’d headed over as soon as Scott had texted to say they were back. He’d arrived just in time to see Scott, Malia, Derek, and Argent spill out of their various cars, triumphant and tired and a little punch-drunk; Scott had thrown one arm over Malia’s shoulder at one point, planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek, Malia laughing delightedly and turning into it. Derek and Argent had just smirked, nodded to Theo and proceeded him into the house.

Now, sat on the couch with his heavy eyelids and his body sinking into the cushions, Scott’s clearly exhausted, but it’s a deeply satisfied kind of tired; the slump of a job well-done. Theo watches him from the loveseat, elbows on his knees, some of Scott’s good mood bleeding over into him and causing some of the tension of the past few weeks to seep out of his muscles. The raids—if they could be called that—had been driving Theo nuts, a constant low-grade burn of anxiety in his gut as he waited for news, knowing that he was best used protecting Beacon Hills and yet feeling like the long stretches of silence between Scott letting the pack know they were heading after one of Monroe’s hunters and him texting to say all was well was the worst kind of torture, never-ending. But with Scott sat contentedly on the couch, Malia in the shower upstairs, Derek, Argent, and Ms. McCall in the kitchen quietly talking, Theo finds himself relaxing, the feeling of _pack_ settling his bones.

Even if—and after Nolan, Theo had sworn to himself he’d never forget this fact again—it wasn’t _Theo’s_ pack.

He pushes the thought away—not down, not forgotten, a cold shard of ice that he purposefully keeps tucked underneath his ribs next to that ember of feeling Scott had ignited—and refocuses on Scott, who stirs some as the sound of the shower upstairs cuts off. Scott blinks a few times and then sits up, rubs his face briskly with his palms and then plants his hands on his knees, leverages himself upright, clearly about to head upstairs to meet Malia and go to bed. Update obviously over, Theo mirrors him, fingers already digging in his pockets for his truck keys to head back to his apartment.

But Scott draws him up short; he frowns at the keys in Theo’s hand and then waves at the ceiling, says around another yawn, “It’s late, you should just stay here tonight. Derek was going to, but he wants to go meet up with Peter, get more information on an old Hale tradition that Amalia”—alpha of a massive pack out of Mariposa whose territory included a substantial chunk of Yosemite National Park—“was asking about. Guest bedroom’s free.”

Theo stares at him but Scott doesn’t seem to give it anymore thought, padding towards the stairs and calling out _good night_ to his mom, Argent, and Derek in the kitchen. Theo listens to their chorus of answers, still standing stupidly in the middle of the living room with his keys in his hands, torn. On the one hand, the thought of spending the night in the McCall house, which would fill with the warm scent of pack now that Scott and the others were back, is tempting. But on the other...he touches mental fingertips to the shard of ice in his chest, that frigid reminder, grits his teeth.

Then all at once he finds himself sick of his own bullshit, and he heads upstairs to the guest bedroom.

He comes awake the next morning slowly, his thoughts sluggish and syrupy; he’d been right about the house, which is now absolutely permeated with the smell of pack—something in Theo settled and wrapped up inside of it—but there are clearly footsteps approaching the bed and his instincts won’t stop protesting. It only takes a half-second longer for him to realize it’s Liam, the scent of him overlaid with the slight chill of the cool autumn air from outside; the high school crew—Alec, too, someone must have swung by to pick up him, because Theo can smell him on Liam’s clothes—must have headed to the McCall house upon waking up and seeing the texts that Scott and the hunting party were back.

Theo cracks open an eye to look at Liam, who’s holding two coffee cups, one in each hand. Liam finishes approaching the bed and slides one hip onto the mattress, ordering, “Scoot over.”

Theo doesn’t move immediately and Liam rolls his eyes, starts to sit anyway. Sighing, Theo grudgingly slides over under the covers until Liam can finish sitting fully on the mattress, coffee cups held carefully to keep them from spilling and his back against the headboard. He settles close enough that his leg is pressing to Theo’s side over the comforter and holds out the cup in his right hand; lightly sugared, from its smell.

Groaning, Theo frees a hand from under the covers and takes it, but doesn’t sit up, just rests it against his stomach and blinks at it. Liam snorts and takes a sip of his own coffee, but doesn’t say anything, just shifts some and in doing so drives his leg a little more firmly against Theo’s side.

“What time is it?” Theo finally croaks, glancing up and sideways to look at Liam’s face.

“Little after nine,” Liam answers, “Mason and Corey are downstairs making enough pancakes to feed a small army so, y’know, if we hurry we might even be able to get some.”

Theo grunts an acknowledgement but doesn’t move to get up, just lets his neck relax. He winds up with his face all but pressed against Liam’s hip, but Liam doesn’t react so Theo doesn’t either, just takes deep, even breaths, absently picking apart the different scents he detects on Liam’s clothes, his skin underneath. Liam smells like coffee, laundry detergent, the pine bush near the driveway of his house that he always inevitably runs into getting into and out of his car; like the cheap body wash he favors and sweat and like himself, that unique blend of _something_ that Theo would—has, in fact—recognized half-dead.

He doesn’t realize that he’s falling back asleep until he feels Liam grab the coffee cup in his hand, steadying it from where it’d been starting to tip in Theo’s slack grip.

“Thanks,” He mutters, blinking himself back awake.

This time he shuffles up some—doesn’t think about the loss of warmth against his face, but does keep his side pressed against Liam’s as he goes—until he has his shoulders and head propped up against the headboard, the rest of him still sprawled out. He takes a sip of the coffee Liam brought him—lightly sugared, as he’d thought—and feels some of the cobwebs in his brain start to clear.

They sit in silence for a long stretch of minutes, slowly working their way through their respective cups. Downstairs, Theo can hear Mason and Corey as they putter around the kitchen; Mason laughingly protests when Malia steals a handful of chocolate chips from the bowl he’s holding, then responds to some comment that Nolan makes. Off to the side there’s the steady sound of chopping; Argent, Theo thinks, cutting up fruit, maybe? Werewolves or no, Ms. McCall had started insisting on a balanced diet; she’d claimed watching them consume so much protein and fat had started to hurt the medical professional inside of her.

Theo’s a little lost in listening to the domestic sounds of the pack, so Liam breaking their shared silence jolts him a bit.

“I think they’re going to do it,” He announces suddenly.

Theo glances at him, “Do what?”

“Catch Monroe,” He says, his fingers _tap-tapping_ on the side of his coffee mug, “They seem like they’re getting really close.”

He’s trying to sound nonchalant, uninvested, but there’s a wire-tight tension vibrating just underneath his skin that Theo can all but feel, can very nearly smell; a scent like a live wire. Theo takes another slow sip of his coffee and hums absently, noncomittedly, and doesn’t realize that he’s just trapped himself into explaining further until Liam shifts to look at him, knee now digging painfully into Theo’s side.

“What does _that_ mean?” He demands, coffee cup now balanced on his knee as if to give a perfect visual indicator that Theo has screwed himself.

Mentally sighing, Theo reaches over and pulls Liam’s knee up so that it’s no longer digging into his kidney; that they consequently end up with Liam’s thigh resting across Theo’s chest is, he tells himself, coincidence.

“You’re right, they are getting close,” Theo agrees, less focused on what he’s saying than he should be, distracted by the way that his every breath drives his chest more firmly against Liam’s leg, “Close enough to back her into a corner.”

Liam’s brow furrows as he considers what Theo’s saying, “Isn’t that a good thing?”

Theo blows out a long breath, reaches up with his free hand to rub his fingertips against his forehead, trying to figure out how to put into words the low-grade curl of dread in his gut that’s been winding steadily tighter ever since Monroe’s attack on Nolan, her attack on the Yreka refugee pack and on Alec, and had only gotten worse and more insistent with every hunter that Scott and the others managed to catch.

“Look,” He finally says, “You back a wild animal into a corner, sure; you’ve got a good chance at catching it. But you also make it significantly more _dangerous_.”

Liam mulls this over, bottom lip caught between his teeth; Theo glances at him and then away again, quickly, “You think she’s going to do something drastic.”

“I think she’s going to do something _desperate_ ,” Theo corrects, unsure how to explain the difference between the two terms but knowing, somehow, that his interpretation was both right and worse.

This time it’s Liam who hums, thoughtfully. He looks up and away, gaze caught in the middle distance; Theo finds himself tilting his head towards him, studying the line of Liam’s jaw, the breadth of his shoulders underneath his flannel shirt.

 _Christ_ , Theo swears silently the instant he realizes what he’s doing, ducking his head to look away quickly. Liam speaks soon after anyway, pulling Theo away from his own spiraling thoughts.

He turns back to Theo and gives him a slow smile, confident and assured and satisfied, “I think we can handle it. Scott and the hunting party”—Theo’s terms had caught on with the rest of the pack, though Liam, Mason, Corey, and Nolan routinely complain about being the _high school crew_ —“The Sheriff, Parrish, Agent McCall. Alec.” He hesitates, but just for a split second, “You.”

Theo stares at him, taken aback, and Liam’s smile widens. He presses his leg hard down into Theo’s chest for a beat and then swivels so that he can plant his feet on the ground, stand up, stretch.

“Hurry up and get out of bed,” He demands, reaching forward to snag Theo’s coffee cup like he was going to use it as either a hostage or a bribe, whichever might work to get Theo up, “I want pancakes.”

He stands over Theo like some kind of drill-sergeant until Theo does as instructed and slides out of bed. Theo reaches to take his coffee back once he’s upright but Liam holds it out of the way, cackles at Theo’s irritated expression and starts backing towards the doorway and the stairs with it held out before him, taunting.

Theo rolls his eyes, “You’re a child.”

“Whatever!” Liam crows, and then he deliberately ignores his own coffee to take a sip of Theo’s, makes a face at the taste—he thinks Theo is some kind of heathen for being able to drink coffee without cream—but doesn’t stop.

Theo knows better, he does, but the house smells like pack and he feels better than he has in weeks, fell asleep listening to the steady heartbeats of Scott, Malia, Ms. McCall, and Argent last night, woke up this morning to the scents of the rest of the pack there too, and he finds himself cutting himself a break, lunges after Liam and chases him laughing down the stairs to the kitchen.

The rest of the pack is there, receives their antics with grins and sighs and—in Malia’s case—assistance; she snags Liam around the waist as he tries to dart past her, which gives Theo enough time to catch up and reclaim his coffee, Liam shrieking out _traitor!_ Derek rolls his eyes but uses the flat of one foot to push out a chair across from where he’s already sitting at the kitchen table, allowing Theo to drop into it next to Corey, who hands him a massive plate of bacon.

Liam claims a chair next to Nolan, who’s already sat next to Alec. Malia is on his other side and eyeing the plate in Theo’s hands with singular interest. Mason arrives at the table soon after carrying a platter—Theo wasn’t even aware Ms. McCall _had_ a platter—of pancakes, Argent following after him with a large bowl of fruit salad. Ms. McCall and Scott are the last to sit, bearing coffee and several bottles of orange juice and mugs. The full pack now present, everyone starts loading up plates, passing bacon and the bowl of fruit salad from person to person, silverware clacking and conversation flowing easy, easy.

It’s a good morning.

\---

Theo’s prediction winds up being tragically prescient.

Mid-December, with Stiles and Lydia back from school having already wrapped their finals, the high school crew—who still have a few exams left—invade Theo’s apartment, this time with the express purpose of harassing Lydia into helping them study for their pre-calc final. She rolls her eyes but agrees, hands held out to accept the bowl of steel cut oats and plain greek yogurt that Theo had—remembering Thanksgiving and surrendering to inevitability—made two portions of before Lydia had even shown up at his door. Theo leaves them to it and goes to run a patrol, joined by Malia, Alec, and Scott.

Derek is notably absent, but since Stiles had failed to appear in Theo’s apartment along with Lydia, Theo has a fairly solid idea about why. Alec holds back a smile and Malia grins salaciously when they decide to head off without him, clearly resisting saying something as Scott gets a pained look on his face and reminds her and, seemingly, the universe at large that _Stiles is my best friend, please don’t_.

Scott and Malia follow Theo back up to his apartment once they finish just after noon, Alec running back to his own place. They trade off showers, Theo digging in his linen closet for extra towels, Scott and Malia bringing up extra clothes from the bags they keep permanently in Stiles’—Scott’s? At what point does ownership switch in that case, Theo wonders—Jeep; a lesson hard learned from their first few weeks chasing after Monroe, when they’d occasionally had to take off in the middle of the night to run down leads, no time to pack bags. Theo pulls on sweatpants and a short-sleeved shirt once he’s done, towels his hair off idly and leaves it draped around his neck as he heads downstairs. He can’t resist shoving Liam’s head down as he passes him at the table, dodges deftly out of the way when Liam protests and swings around to try and grab him.

“Focus, Liam,” Lydia orders, glaring at Theo; he raises his hands in surrender and heads to the kitchen, where he pulls the tupperware container full of pulled pork that Ms. McCall had sent him home with last pack dinner out of the fridge and absently snacks on pieces of it cold as he peruses the news on his laptop.

Derek and Stiles appear not long after to catcalls and general assholery. Derek merely rolls his eyes and goes to stand over Lydia, kissing the top of her head and peering down to see what she’s working on, but Stiles raises his arms in apparent victory and bows deeply to Mason, Corey, Nolan, and Liam sat around Theo’s table, to Theo when he raises his head and leans out to see what all the commotion is about through the negative space between the two brick walls that constitute the doorway to his kitchen.

Derek wanders into the kitchen while Stiles is still harassing the high school crew, Alec reappearing at one point from his own apartment and joining the fray. Derek asks Theo how patrol that morning went, eyeing Theo’s tupperware container of pulled pork as he does and Theo rolls his eyes, pushes it towards him with his fingertips. Scott, Malia, Stiles, and Alec join them soon after, both of them immediately going for the pork as well, and Theo resigns himself to stealing whatever’s left of Derek’s leftovers later as payment.

They spend the next few hours talking about everything and nothing, Theo and Alec standing at the island, Derek, Stiles, and Scott claiming the bar stools across from them—which Theo had purchased after Thanksgiving mainly to get Lydia to stop telling him that he should—Malia sitting on a section of counter by the sink, her legs kicking idly back and forth. In the next room, the sound of the high school crew and Lydia rises and falls like white noise as they ask Lydia questions, listen to her surprisingly patient explanations. They wander into the kitchen at various points to eat the rest of Theo’s leftovers and whatever else they can find, joining the kitchen conversation briefly and then stepping back out.

Eventually everyone gets hungry enough to start making noise about an actual meal, and after Theo pointedly reminds everyone that he doesn’t purposefully stock his—now notably depleted—kitchen to feed eleven people, the decision is made to order subs from Giovanni’s, Derek offering to go pick them up. Theo is bent over his laptop putting in the order and ignoring Liam attempting to backseat form-fill over his shoulder when Lydia—who’d come into the kitchen to grab a glass of water—stops dead, the glass falling from her suddenly slack fingers to shatter on the ground.

And even though Theo knows what’s coming, his head jerking up to stare at her wildly in the half-second before she opens her mouth, Lydia’s scream still hits him like a freight train.

It only lasts five seconds, maybe ten, but it feels like an eternity. When he comes back to himself Theo realizes that he has Liam pinned between himself and the island, like he’d moved instinctually to shield him. Theo moves back instantly, grimacing, but Liam doesn’t say anything; Theo isn’t sure if that’s due to him not actually have anything to say—unlikely—or being distracted by Lydia, who is very firmly holding back both Stiles and Derek, her palms against their chests to hold them at bay as she repeats _I’m fine_ over and over again like repetition will eliminate the panic coming off of them.

“Fine?” Stiles counters, moving into _argumentative_ since that’s his usual response to situations over which he has little control, “That was an ‘we-are-all-going-to-die’ scream.”

“No,” Lydia corrects frostily, “That was a ‘ _someone_ -is-going-to-die’ scream. And only maybe. It felt more like a prediction than a reaction.”

She goes to take a step back from Derek and Stiles, only to have Derek whip out an arm and drag her back forward. She looks prepared to take his head off until Derek raises his eyebrows pointedly at the broken glass she’d very nearly stepped on, and then she grimaces, squeezes one of Derek’s forearms apologetically.

“Sorry about the glass,” She says to Theo, who can’t help an incredulous laugh.

“I think I’ll live,” He tells her, still trying to get his heartbeat and adrenal gland under control.

She shakes her hair and arms out—Theo can’t help but think how very _Stiles_ a movement it is—and settles firmly back onto her heels, like some visual metaphor for her regaining her composure.

“Any idea who or what that was about?” Scott pipes up; he’s working his jaw like his eardrums had popped, which; fair. Across from him, Malia and Alec are doing the same.

“Not yet,” She shakes her head, then announces, “I need to look at the map,”

Theo isn’t sure what she’s waiting for—it’s not like he’s going to stop her—until he realizes she’s saying it to Derek and Stiles, both of them still with their hands clutching various parts of her. Derek at least has the grace to grimace and let go, but Stiles just scowls, clearly prepared to fight this one out. It isn’t until Derek wraps an arm around his shoulders and yanks him backwards that he lets go, and even then he just wheels around to glare at Derek instead. Lydia doesn’t stick around to see how that one ends; she steps carefully over the broken glass with another apologetic glance at Theo, who waves it off, and heads out to the living room and the map, Scott and Malia trailing after her.

Theo leaves Derek and Stiles to their hissing argument and goes to get a broom and dustpan for the glass. Liam follows him as far as the living room and then breaks off, goes to completely fail at not crowding Lydia as he waits to see what she comes up with as she works to translate her vision. Mason and Corey both look a little thrown, but as veteran McCall pack members they’re clearly well on their way to shaking it off; they don’t go back to their homework, but they at least—unlike Liam—decide to watch Lydia from the table instead of two inches off her left shoulder blade.

Alec, on the other hand, follows Theo all the way to the closet where, during Theo’s original move-in, someone stuck all the cleaning supplies. Theo hears Nolan join Alec from where he’s half-buried inside the closet, aware of both of their presences and their clearly shaken demeanors but more focused on trying to reach the broom without starting an avalanche of the miscellaneous junk he’s somehow accumulated.

“That was a banshee scream?” Nolan asks finally, obviously trying to keep his tone level but failing miserably at it.

Theo manages to free the broom and dustpan and rocks back on his heels, waits to see if moving either is going to end in tragedy; when a few seconds pass without incident, he straightens and starts to head back to the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Theo answers, glancing off to the side where Lydia is standing in front of the map, one of the high school crew’s notebooks and a black marker in hand as she draws, eyes firmly focused on the page.

“Does that mean…” Nolan trails off, dogging Theo’s footsteps, Alec shadowing him silently, “Is..someone dead? Did Monroe or her hunters kill someone?”

And Theo sees the reason for his interest, suddenly, though as it turns out “interest” isn’t the right word; it’s guilt. There’s always going to be a part of Nolan that feels responsible for the atrocities that Monroe has committed and will commit, the albatross strung firmly around his neck; it’s a feeling with which Theo has some sympathy. Theo works on sweeping up the last of the glass and purposefully doesn’t look at him or at Alec—who smells and sounds equally nervous, though for admittedly different reasons—lets him keep his illusion that he’s somehow disguising his anxiety.

Instead he says as casually as possible, “Lydia thinks it’s a prediction, not a reaction. There may be time to save whoever it is. That’s what she’s working on.”

Theo finishes sweeping up the last of the glass and throws it away, glances at Nolan and Alec out of the corner of his eye and sees them glancing at each other, nodding. Nolan’s body loses some of the tension that had been winching his shoulders tight. More tellingly, his scent loses some of the sour edge it’d gained, though it doesn’t fade entirely. Alec stays tense, but Theo bets that has more to do with the everyone _else’s_ anxiety; Alec’s control may be all but impeccable now when things are calm, but he still struggles a bit when situations go pear-shaped and everyone around him is giving off harsh signals.

“C’mon,” Theo tells them, leaning the broom and dustpan against an empty space of wall, “Let’s go see what she’s figured out.”

Turns out Lydia has figured out quite a bit by the time Theo, Alec, and Nolan join the rest of the spectators. At first glance, the drawing in her hand just looks like a bunch of random lines criss-crossing the notebook page with no particular rhyme or reason. But when Lydia rips the page out and places it over the map, Theo immediately sees what Lydia must have realized her vision meant; the layout of the lines matches perfectly with the set of national highways and state routes near Visalia, just north of Bakersfield. He can see Scott go to open his mouth, ask what Lydia thinks it might mean, when Lydia switches so that she’s holding the drawing in place with one hand, reaches up with the other to place a fingertip over the intersection of State Routes 198 and 65.

“There,” She says finally, “Whatever it is, it’s going to happen there.”

Stiles and Derek appear from the kitchen, Stiles still looking mulish but at least no longer arguing. He comes to stand next to Lydia, look at the map; Liam tosses him a marker from the mug on the bookshelf nearby and he catches it, circles the identical spot on the map that Lydia had indicated on the drawing when she takes it away.

“Any idea when?” Scott asks, coming forward some to squint at the map like the flat 2D surface is going to tell him something. Theo doesn’t fault him the instinct; he’d had to stop himself from doing the same.

“Soon,” Lydia answers, “But it was dark.” She glances at the bright sunlight shining in through Theo’s massive windows, “I think tonight.”

Scott blows out a noisy breath, takes a step back and glances around the room, “So, I guess we’re going to Visalia?”


	3. Chapter 3

An hour later, with Lydia, Stiles, and the hunting party—including Liam, who’d given Scott a look that had just _dared_ him to try and make him stay behind, and Corey, who’d refused to stay if Liam was going—halfway to Visalia, Theo leans against the front edge of his table, staring in distracted silence at his map, and tries to pin down why his gut won’t stop churning and his instincts won’t stop screaming.

He’s not any closer to an answer thirty seconds later when his front door rolls open and Alec steps through, looking a little exasperated when Theo glances over at him. Alec slides the door back shut and pads over to the table, stands next to it for a beat and then rolls his eyes and jumps up to sit on it at Theo’s side when Theo just turns back to the map without acknowledging him further.

“You want to tell me what the hell is going on with you?” He finally says, “You’re giving off so much nervous energy that _my_ jaw was starting to ache all the way over in my place from keeping my fangs from popping out.”

“It’s not _nervous energy_ ,” Theo protests resentfully; he’s not some B-movie damsel-in-distress.

“Stoic agitation then, whatever,” Alec substitutes dismissively, “Look, even Nolan and Mason can tell something’s wrong and they don’t have to suffer through hearing your teeth grinding from across the hall.”

There’s a part of Theo that very strongly wants to tell Alec to fuck off, every muscle in his body strung tight with low-grade, nameless, directionless _fear_ ; it’s why he’d banished Alec, Nolan, and Mason to Alec’s apartment in the first place, their easy demeanor—so sure everything would be fine, so blissfully confident in Scott and the others—burning like salt in an open wound. But he knows Alec is just trying to help, can smell the worry he’s trying to bury under his casual slouch and bad attempts at humor. And besides, Theo knows that if he sits here alone any longer without doing something about the dread eating away at him he’s going to lose his goddamn mind.

“Something’s wrong,” He finally grits out, frustrated that that’s all he can seem to state with certainty.

Alec stiffens, loses some of his admittedly faked nonchalance, “Did you hear from Scott and the others, what happened? Are they okay?”

“They’re fine,” Theo snaps—too loud, too vicious—so he takes a deep breath, exhales it out slowly, repeats in a quieter, softer tone, “They’re fine.”

And they _are_ fine, at least as of five minutes ago when Scott had texted to say that they’d just passed Chico. So what the hell is wrong with him? Theo can feel Alec’s confusion and desperately wishes he could put it into words for Alec. If he could do that, he might be able to put it into words for _himself_.

“Then what’s wrong?” Alec presses, gently this time.

“I don’t _know_ , Alec,” Theo snarls, suddenly unable to sit still anymore; he shoves off from the table and stalks over to the windows, braces his forearms against one of the panes and stares out over Beacon Hills, repeats, almost to himself, “I don’t know.”

Alec seems to consider this for a few long seconds; Theo can see him biting his lip in the reflection of the glass. He watches as Alec glances at the map, back at Theo, then slips off the table to come stand next to him looking hesitant but determined.

“So what do you know, Theo?” He says, then holds up his hands in a placating gesture when Theo pushes back off the window and rakes his fingers through his hair, obviously frustrated with Alec’s questions, pleads, “ _Theo_. Whatever it is, whatever you’re thinking, just because you don’t know everything, doesn’t mean you don’t know anything. So tell me what you _do_ know.”

That brings Theo up short; he stops and looks at Alec appraisingly, impressed in spite of himself. Then he touches his tongue to his bottom lip, glances back out the window, tries to organize the mess of thoughts in his head; what _does_ he know?

“The timing is too perfect,” He finally says, unsure before the words leave his mouth of exactly what he’s going to say.

“The timing…” Alec repeats carefully, “The timing of Lydia’s vision?”

“Prediction,” Theo corrects absently, something tickling in the back of his mind as he does so: banshees _predicted_ death, but sometimes they were just that; predictions.

“Prediction,” Alec says, clearly humoring Theo for what he must see as unnecessary grammatical fastidiousness, “Okay, so the timing of Lydia’s prediction is too perfect. What makes it ‘too perfect?’”

Theo can hear Alec’s air-quotes around the last two words. What _did_ make the timing too perfect? Theo remembers staring at the map, at the assembled McCall pack, when Lydia had first identified Visalia, when she’d said _whatever it is, it’s going to happen there_. And then, when Scott had asked _when_ , she’d looked out the windows and said _tonight_. But why tonight, what was so special about _tonight_?

Theo whips around, looks at the map. Specifically, he looks at where he’d slapped a post-it note over Redding: _Rosser/Preston Trial, CA Eastern District Court, 12/16-12/22_. Nolan was going to have to testify, but only towards the end of the trial. The first few days involved Agent McCall, laying the groundwork for the prosecution to tie Rossler and Preston to Monroe’s ‘cult,’ and then the Sheriff and Parrish testifying about the cult’s genesis in Beacon Hills and the attack on Nolan. _The first few days_.

Now, Theo realizes. _The first few days_ meant now.

The trial had started two days ago. Agent McCall, the Sheriff, and Parrish had all gone to Redding and would remain there through the end of the trial. Scott and the majority of the pack—Theo excepted; he needed to stay behind and keep an eye on Beacon Hills while they were gone—had planned to escort Nolan to and from Redding in two days.

Theo had paid attention to the trial, but only absently; Rossler and Preston were off the board, safe in Agent McCall’s hands with the entire force of the California FBI behind him, and Monroe wouldn’t be able to touch Nolan with Scott and the others there with him. The trial had been so neatly sewn up that Theo had set it aside, all but forgotten about it, more concerned with what might happen in Beacon Hills while they were gone; he’d already asked Shohreh in Yreka and Nathaniel in Carson City to send him a few betas to help him protect the town, the county, during the McCall pack’s absence. But they weren’t going to arrive until the day after _tomorrow_ , not _tonight_.

“Everyone’s gone,” Theo realizes as the suddenly, stunningly obvious truth begins to fully dawn on him.

“What?” Alec asks, confused; Theo’s silence followed by his sudden pronouncement must have seemed like a giant non-sequitur.

“Everyone’s _gone_ ,” Theo repeats forcefully, gesturing to the map; when Alec just continues to stare at him, Theo stalks over to the map and rips down the post-it note, holds it out, “The trial, Alec. Agent McCall, the Sheriff, Parrish—they’re all at the trial in Redding.”

 _God_ damn _it_ , Theo thinks, amazed at his own idiocy; how could he have missed this? His fist closes around the note, crumples it; he brings it clenched in his fist up to his mouth, then turns and throws it into the middle of the room in a sudden burst of frustration.

“They’re gone, and now so is Scott, and Malia, and Lydia, and Stiles, and Derek. Argent is on his way to Visalia from wherever the hell he’s been. Even Liam and Corey are gone,” Theo explains in a low, furious rush.

“But they’re gone because of Lydia’s vision. And she only had that a few hours ago, how could Monroe—how could anyone—know that she’d have a vision?” Alec counters slowly, not disagreeing so much as pointing out a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit.

But it _does_.

“ _Prediction_ ,” Theo corrects again, this time deliberately, “Banshees don’t see the future, they _predict_ it.”

And predictions could be wrong. Predictions—predictions could be _gamed_.

“Get Mason and Nolan,” Theo orders Alec. When Alec doesn’t move he snarls, knows his eyes are flaring and his fangs are lengthening, can’t help it, “ _Right now_ , Alec. _Go_.”

Alec, who’d been looking at Theo like Theo had, in fact, lost his goddamn mind, who’d startled backwards badly at Theo’s sudden aggressive change in demeanor, his own eyes flaring and his claws lengthening defensively, goes. His scent, gone sharp and sour with fear—fear of _Theo_ —burns in the back of Theo’s throat but he shoves it down, forces himself to move. He grabs his keys, his jacket, his phone, heads out into the hallway to meet Alec, Mason, and Nolan already unlocking it, preparing to call Scott. His thumb is hovering over Scott’s name when his head jerks up, hearing the sound of the elevator creaking, straining under a heavy load. He flares his nostrils, scenting the air, and feels the bottom drop out of stomach: they’d tried to disguise it, but it’s there; gunpowder and wolfsbane.

He darts a look up at the panel above the elevator doors, sees the floor indicator starting to turn from the floor below to Theo’s own just as Alec comes out of his apartment, followed by Mason and Nolan. Alec’s already opening his mouth, probably about to demand a better explanation for Theo’s completely uncharacteristic behavior, but Theo—who’d turned his senses to the stairwell, hears the steady pounding of feet but only a few—whirls on him, shoves his truck keys into Alec’s hands and then grabs Nolan and Mason, all but bodily throws them down the corridor towards the door leading to the stairs.

“The stairwell, get into the stairwell, _hurry_ ,” He shouts, grabbing Alec and shoving him as well, “Alec, there are hunters in the stairwell, you’re going to have to get past them. Keep Mason and Nolan behind you, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Theo—” Alec starts, but Theo cuts him off.

“There’s no _time_ ,” Theo snarls, “ _Go_.”

Alec goes with one last, desperate look back. Theo watches as he runs to where Nolan and Mason are stood uncertainly next to the stairwell, murmurs something to them and precedes them into it. Then Theo turns his attention back to the elevator, mind racing; it had already come to a jolting stop on his floor but there had to be a way to stop it _opening_. He runs his eyes frantically over the frame, thinking _come on, come on_. In the end, the only thing he can think of is born of pure desperation.

He takes a deep, bracing breath, curls his hand into a fist, and then drives it against and then through the metal of the right-side elevator door, right next to the frame.

He can feel the muscles of his forearm shredding as he does, the metal giving way to sharp, jagged edges. Gritting his teeth against the pained moan that wants to tear its way out of his throat—and noting, absently, the confused, panicked voices of the hunters inside—he rips his hand back out and dives for the other side, takes a few panting breaths and then braces himself, repeats the process on the left-side door. Then he staggers back, his arm dripping blood, to see if his batshit idea had worked.

The elevator doors strain, trying to open, but he can hear the ruined metal grinding against the openings, the peeled-back edges from where Theo punched through them preventing them from doing so. _Holy shit_ , Theo thinks incredulously, _that worked_.

But there’s a four-inch gap where the doors had managed to open before Theo reached them, and one of the hunters sticks the barrel of his gun through, fires. Theo yells as a bullet rips through his left calf, dropping him down to his right knee, just in time for another bullet to slam into his right thigh and a third into his right shoulder. Cursing, Theo throws himself to the side to avoid another spray of bullets, extends the claws of his left hand and digs them into his thigh to rip the bullet out, then does the same for the wounds on his calf and in his shoulder. He darts a look up at the elevator as he does, hearing the hunters inside as they snap at each other, start to work on prying the doors open.

 _God damn it_ , Theo swears; bullets or no bullets, he can feel the wolfsbane already starting its slow spread. Groaning, he forces himself over onto his knees and then pushes himself onto his feet, starts running raggedly towards the stairwell. The hunters in the elevator would get out eventually, there isn’t anything more he could do about that but get to Alec, help him get Mason and Nolan out of the stairwell and to his truck, onto the road and away.

He rips open the stairwell door, pulls it shut behind him and then glances around quickly, looking for something to jam it with. The railing is made of cast iron bars: he wrenches one out of place and shoves it through the door handle; it won’t hold long, but seconds might matter. Then he turns and starts sprinting as fast as he can down the stairwell, occasionally slamming into the walls as his injured legs buckle.

And then, the sound he’d dreaded to hear; gunfire.

Somewhere below him, Mason and Nolan gasp and Alec roars. It gets at something primal in Theo even through the cacophony of gunfire and splintering concrete and his steadily dwindling strength, and he snarls—the best he can manage in his condition—hopes Alec can hear him. He runs faster and turns a corner just in time to spot Mason and Nolan, huddled back as far as they can get in one of the stairwell landings to try and get out of range of the hunters two landings down. Alec is between them, crouched low with eyes flared and clawed hands extended, ready to attack.

Theo takes advantage of the hunters’ preoccupation with Alec to swing up onto and then over the stairwell railing, leaping down to catch them unawares. He slices his claws through one of their necks, slams the other against the wall with his shoulder—feels more than hears his ribcage as it cracks, gives way—and then drives his clawed hand through the last one’s gut. Jerking his hand free, Theo stands over the three dead or dying hunters, waiting to see if they’re able to move, to keep fighting; they’re not.

He looks up at Alec, who’s staring at him through wide golden eyes, fanged mouth open in shock. Theo’s left leg buckles the next second, his calf screaming, and he catches himself against the wall, snarls at himself and forces himself back upright, looks back at Alec.

“Come _on_ ,” He barks out, “We have to keep moving.”

That seems to snap Alec out of his reverie; he turns to check on Mason and Nolan, who’ve already started towards him. The three of them reach Theo and step gingerly over and around the hunters; Alec and Nolan keep going, Alec placing himself deliberately in front of Nolan, but Mason stops, runs his eyes over Theo’s bloody clothes, his shredded sleeve and the bullet holes pocking his jeans, his shirt.

“You’re hurt,” He murmurs, eyeing the black blood oozing slowly from Theo’s bullet wounds.

“I’ll live,” Theo snaps, “Go.”

Mason hesitates a second longer and then goes, following after Alec and Nolan. Theo gives himself a split-second, just one, to lean back against the wall, his entire body one long line of agony, and then he surges after them. They make it down a few more sets of stairs, but just as Alec is about to bypass the second floor landing, Theo barks out _no_.

“There’ll be more hunters watching the lobby,” Theo explains breathlessly, falling back against the wall as a spasm of pain locks his muscles, “We need to—need to get into the second floor apartment on the left, it’s on the side of the parking lot. Go out—go out over the balcony.”

“You don’t think she’ll be watching your truck?” Mason asks; there’s a definite undercurrent of worry in his voice but Theo could kiss him for staying focused.

“That’s why I’m going out first,” Theo tells him, “I’ll take care of whoever’s waiting and then you follow.”

“I’m going with you,” Alec states, only a slight tremor in his voice; _good kid_ , Theo thinks hazily.

“No, you’re not,” Theo counters, then louder when Alec goes to protest, “ _No_ , you’re _not_. Someone has got to get Mason and Nolan out of here.”

“Yeah, both of us,” Alec insists, but he doesn’t sound convinced, and Theo snorts out a humorless laugh, rolls his head along the wall to look at him.

“Alec,” He says gently.

He means, _come on, look at me_. Whatever strain of wolfsbane the hunters had used in their bullets, it’s potent; Theo has maybe— _maybe_ —ten more minutes left on his feet, and then he’ll be down for the count.

Immediately there are three loud protests, Mason and Nolan and Alec all swearing variations on _we’re not leaving you here_ , but Theo just shakes his head, cuts a hand through the air. Shockingly, they all fall silent; _christ_ , Theo thinks in response, _I must really look terrible_.

“You can’t help me. They only thing you can do is get captured, too, and used against Scott and the others,” Theo tells them quietly, and watches their faces crumple; he’s right, and they know it, “But if you get out, you can go get help and come save my sorry ass.”

He tries for a smile but another spasm of pain turns it into a grimace. Alec moves forward like he’s going to reach for his arm, take some of his pain, but Theo jerks out of reach, shakes his head.

“Save your strength,” Theo orders, not unkindly, then he tilts his head back, closes his eyes and sharpens his senses past the overwhelming tides of pain that keep cresting over him; either the hunters from the elevator would break through his makeshift barricade or the ones in the lobby would start wondering at the lack of noise and come check on their stair-bound colleagues, but either way, they couldn’t stay here, “Go. Apartment on the left side.”

Alec, Mason, and Nolan hesitate a second longer and then they go. Theo takes a deep breath—or tries to, anyway; his lungs seize up and he chokes on air, then manages to gasp, finally. _Just a bit farther_ , he promises himself, forcing himself up and off the wall and through the door onto the second floor after Alec and the others. Just a bit farther, and then Alec and Mason and Nolan would be out of the hunters’ reach; they could call Scott and the others from the road. The McCall pack would be safe, and Theo...Theo could just—stop.

He could stop.

Alec breaks open the door to the apartment on the left, thankfully unoccupied, and leads Mason and Nolan at a quick jog over to the balcony door, Theo following as quickly as he’s able. He puts a hand out before Alec can open the door, warns him back, then gently opens it and steps out himself, moving carefully. When he gets over to the balcony railing and looks down—fifteen feet, uncomfortable but survivable for Mason and Nolan—he sees a trio of hunters arrayed around his truck, more twenty feet away by the entrance to the building. _Doable_ , Theo thinks, and then he eases back inside, gestures to Alec.

“You’re going to need to follow me down almost immediately,” He tells him, “They’re going to know the second I hit the ground what you’re trying to do. I can keep the three by my truck occupied while you three get in the truck and go.”

“Theo—” Alec tries, Mason and Nolan looking equally stricken behind him.

“Alec, stop,” Theo orders, as forcefully as he can. He hooks Alec by the back of the neck, draws him in some so he look into his eyes, so Alec can see how deathly serious he is, “Once you get on the road, you drive to Shohreh, okay? You drive to Yreka and Shohreh and you don’t slow down or turn around or stop for anything until you’ve gotten Mason and Nolan safely to her. _Alec_ ,” Theo says forcefully, shaking him a bit with the hand he’s still got wrapped around the back of his neck when Alec’s expression twists, “I don’t care what happens, or who calls to say everything’s alright—Scott, Argent, me—I don’t care. You _don’t stop_ until you get them to Shohreh. Do you understand me?”

“I understand,” Alec assures him quietly, then again, more loudly, when Theo tightens his hand, “I understand.”

“Okay. Okay, good,” Theo breathes out, starting to pull away.

But Alec brings him up short; he clamps his own hand over Theo’s on the back of his neck, holds it there so Theo can’t pull away. When he speaks, his voice is choked and there’s nothing but heartbreaking vulnerability in his wet eyes as he whispers, quietly enough that Mason and Nolan won’t hear, “Please don’t ask me to leave you here to die.”

So Alec had realized the score after all. Theo closes his eyes and pulls Alec back in so that they’re forehead to forehead, holds him there for a long few seconds. There’s nothing he can say to make it better, and there’s no other way out.

“I’m sorry,” He tells him, and means it.

It feels like he’s spent the last months of his life being nothing but sorry; sorry for what he’d done to the McCall pack, and sorry for what he’d done to his own. Sorry for his sister, and for everyone else who’d wound up as his collateral damage. He’d sworn he’d do better, had desperately tried to do better. He doesn’t want to do this to Alec now, but there’s nothing for it.

He pulls back from Alec, his own eyes wet, “Get them to Shohreh safely.”

Alec’s whole face crumples but he nods, “I will, I swear.”

Theo smiles brokenly at him, squeezes his hand one last time on the back of Alec’s neck, then lets his hand fall away, his gaze drift back over to the balcony. He can hear the crackling of radios as the hunters regroup, try and figure out where they’ve gone, how to find them.

They’re running out of time.

“Okay, everyone know what they’re doing?” He asks, looking back at Nolan and Mason and Alec; Alec won’t—can’t—look him in the eyes, but he nods, and so do Mason and Nolan, “Let’s go, then.”

He leads them out onto the balcony quietly. Behind him, Alec is whispering instructions to Mason and Nolan, the best way to drop without hurting themselves. Theo tunes him out and checks the positions of the hunters again, calculates his best angle of attack; if he could drop onto the one closest to the back, it’d clear the way for Alec and the others while he then dealt with the ones further up.

“Ready?” He turns back; Alec nods sharply.

Then Theo smiles, one last time, at Alec, at Mason and Nolan, and then he launches himself over the railing and comes down perfectly positioned on top of the rearmost hunter. He can feel the hunter’s spine snap under the force but ignores it, ignores the sound of Alec and Mason and Nolan hitting the ground shortly after him—Mason landing awkwardly with a bitten off cry—to focus on the two hunters turning towards him in surprise.

He gets the first with a lunging tackle, slashes his throat when they both go down; behind him, he can hear Alec dragging Mason to his feet, yelling at Nolan to unlock the truck and open the door, get inside. Theo snarls at the third and final hunter as he wheels on Theo, gun raised; he fires, and the impact shocks through Theo’s gut as the bullet rips through his intestines. But the sound of his truck engine revving gives Theo just enough strength to surge forward, rip the gun out of the hunter’s hands with one clawed fist while he swings the other around to slice through his throat. The last hunter goes down just as Theo’s truck all but leaps forward, Alec gunning it.

But then the engine idles, and Theo turns as best he can to see Alec leaning out of the open front door a dozen feet away, his whole expression pleading. For a second Theo’s tempted—there’s wolfsbane in his bag, he could _make it_ —but then he hears the sound of the hunters by the door yelling, feels shards of asphalt start to slice through the unprotected skin of his face and hands as they start firing.

“Alec, _go!_ ” He shouts, and turns back to face the oncoming hunters.

He hears the pained sound Alec makes, the _slam_ of the driver’s side door, and then the blast of heat and noise as the truck speeds away. The hunters keep firing at it, and a handful break off to try and get back to their own SUVs, give chase, but Theo just grins, mouth bloody; Alec knows Beacon Hills almost as well as Theo, at this point.

They’ll never find him, and they’ll never catch him.

But that’s it. That knowledge, that Alec and Mason and Nolan are _gone_ , are _safe_ , it takes the last of whatever had been keeping him standing, and Theo drops to his knees, crumples sideways and catches himself with an outstretched hand. Or he tries to, anyway; his arm, connected to the shoulder that’d been shot earlier, collapses, and Theo hits the asphalt, hard.

He rolls over onto his back just as a handful of hunters come into his line of sight, surrounding him, automatic rifles strapped to their chests and their fingers on the triggers. Theo can’t help but laugh at their pinched, furious expressions, even as it makes black blood bubble up between his lips, as his shredded gut screams and his whole body shrieks with agony.

“Sorry,” He tells them insincerely, practically gasping out the words, “Did we mess up Monroe’s big plan?”

But one of the hunters just smiles nastily at him, “Ask her yourself.”

And then he raises his rifle and slams the butt of it down on Theo’s temple.

\---

Theo wakes up.

That’s probably the biggest surprise. Theo wakes up and he’s not dying of wolfsbane poisoning anymore; someone has tended to his bullet wounds, and from the singed smell to the air, they’d done it by burning the wolfsbane out of him. _Fuck_ , Theo thinks groggily, his whole thought process moving sluggishly, so sluggishly, that in the next instant he realizes he’s been drugged, somehow.

And that’s when he gets his second biggest surprise.

Monroe leans over him, upside-down and with her arms braced on either side of the table that Theo now realizes he’s laying on. She looks depressingly well, considering how faithfully the McCall pack and their allies had been trying to run her into the ground the past few months; her mouth is as red as ever, her black curls as silky. Her smile widens when she sees him looking up at her and she leans back some, out of his field of vision, and then comes back into view by his side.

“Hey, Theo,” She tells him softly, gently; gently like a spider creeping towards its captured prey, “Good to see you awake.”

 _Fuck off_ , Theo tries to say, but can’t, his tongue heavy and his jaw refusing to cooperate. Monroe must see him struggling because she frowns some, reaches over to fiddle with something nearby. Theo forces himself to focus enough to tip his head, just slightly, and sees the vat of bubbling, light blue liquid sat on a shelf nearby, a thin rubber tube leading from it and straight into Theo’s strapped down left arm.

“Wolfsbane, of course,” Monroe explains when she notices him looking, like a teacher giving a lecture to a shy student, “A special breed that I’ve been working on. Not as virulent as the typical strains, meant to keep your kind down rather than dead.”

She smiles at him, walks two fingers up his trapped arm to tap lightly at the needle taped to his skin. Theo somehow finds it in himself to try and jerk away, but all he really manages is to make his fingers twitch.

“It’s a little more complicated with you chimeras,” She confesses, then grins at him mischievously, “But considering there are only three of your kind left in the whole wide world, I don’t think it’ll be too much of a problem.”

 _Corey_ , Theo thinks, _Hayden_ , eyes widening before he can himself; god _damn_ Monroe’s mad scientist drug. Monroe laughs at him, pats one of his strapped down legs.

“How funny that you’re so protective _now_. Where was that instinct when you were their alpha?” She wonders.

That stings, but it also jolts Theo back to himself, some. _Stop_ , he tells himself, _stop rising to her bait_. He forces himself to take a few deep, calming breaths, aware even as he’s doing it that Monroe is watching him the way one watches a caged zoo animal; curious, intrigued, a little revolted.

“You know what’s interesting,” Monroe tells him, when he’s managed to relax as much as he can and started determinedly staring at the ceiling, refusing to look at her, “I didn’t even know you were _with_ the McCall pack until Rossler and Preston called the first night they got into town. I figured Scott would have run you out of town the second the Anuk-ite was dead.”

 _You and me both, lady_ , Theo thinks, but doesn’t say, but Monroe doesn’t need this conversation to be interactive, apparently.

“I didn’t get it at first, at least until Rossler and Preston failed to come back with Nolan in tow,” Monroe admits.

 _‘In tow,’_ Theo thinks skeptically; Rossler and Preston would have killed Nolan before they ever got him to Monroe, intentionally or not.

“But then they _didn’t_ come back,” Monroe looks back at him, and Theo can’t help it. His eyes slide instinctually to her; tracking the predator in the room, “And then...and _then_ ,” Monroe pauses, like she can’t believe what she’s about to say, “Not only did I lose two of my best lieutenants, but suddenly—at every _step_ —McCall was _there_.”

She shakes her head, but Theo can smell her rising ire even through the burning of wolfsbane in his nose, the dulling of his senses; she’s putting on a show, sure, but she’s also _angry_.

“I thought it was Argent, at first,” Monroe confesses, “But I knew his father, and Argent men aren’t master strategists like that. Argent _women_ , maybe…”

Monroe smiles at him again, like they’re sharing some private joke. But then the smile falls off her face and she steps forward until she can grip Theo’s jaw, force his head to turn, his eyes to meet hers.

“So it’s been you, all along,” She murmurs, studying his face. Then she abruptly releases his jaw, shoves it away with enough strength that Theo’s neck strains, “My men brought me your map, and your research.”

She disappears for a few long seconds and Theo takes advantage to try and take stock, see which parts of his body might feel up to cooperating. The answer is a very depressing _none_ ; even if he wasn’t being drugged with wolfsbane to within an inch of coherency, his legs and arms are strapped to the table. He’s not going anywhere.

Monroe reappears and smiles at him like she knows exactly what he was trying, thinking, while she was briefly away. In her hands is Theo’s laptop, a few of the notebooks that he’d kept around to scribble idle thoughts, tactics; sometimes they came together, sometimes he tore them out and Liam made paper cranes out of them.

 _Liam_ , he thinks, his chest going brutally tight, then forces his thoughts away; it wouldn’t do him any good, and with Monroe hovering over him with a giant question mark over her intentions for him, it might do a whole lot of harm. Monroe doesn’t seem to notice his temporary distraction, just hums idly to herself and sets down the notebooks and Theo’s laptop on top his stomach, smirks when he jerks a bit in his bindings.

“We couldn’t get into the laptop, of course. You’re too smart not to have it locked and encrypted,” She smiles at him again, like she’s giving him a gold star for an assignment well done, “But the map and your notebooks were...revealing.”

She flips absently through a few of them, then sets them down once more on his stomach with some force, sighing.

“I wasn’t going to hurt them, you know,” She tells him, sounding frustrated and a little hurt to be so misunderstood, “My men had very strict orders not to kill them.”

 _They didn’t listen_ , Theo thinks bitterly; he doesn’t give a shit about his own wounds, he’d signed up for that, but the hunters firing in the staircase and in the parking lot could very easily have put several holes into Mason and Nolan, huddled on that landing and then in the back of Theo’s truck. And the fact that Alec had gotten out unscatched was a minor miracle.

“I just figured it was time for some of us to talk, you know? Clear the air,” She continues, like she’s describing a perfectly reasonable course of action and not a hostage-taking, “Scott and his merry little hunting party wouldn’t have agreed to listen without...leverage.”

She tilts her head at him thoughtfully, then glances back up at the vat of bubbling wolfsbane keeping him poisoned. Leaning over him, she deliberately plants her hand against his sternum, compressing it and constricting the ability of his lungs to expand while she fiddles again with the vat’s controls. Theo stares up at the ceiling and swallows back every sound his throat wants to make, determined not to give her the satisfaction of hearing him struggle to breathe.

“There, how’s that?” She asks once she’s dropped back down flat on her feet, sounding genuinely interested in his comfort.

“Fuck you,” Theo tries again, and this time he’s able to spit it out, though his voice sounds raspy and kitten-weak.

“Charming,” Monroe comments, but seems satisfied with his ability to speak, “Anyway, they only had wolfsbane in their bullets for _you_. I knew the chances you’d come quietly were slim.”

“So, what?” Theo asks hoarsely, “Kill me and take them, and then do what? How did you see this ending, _ma’am_?”

He adds the honorific at the end to mock her hunters’ fanatical devotion to her, and from the narrowed-eyed look she gives him, she knows it. But she smiles after a beat, relaxing.

“Very simply,” She tells him, planting her hands and leaning over him some as she speaks, “They’d tell me everything they knew about their irritating little pack, and then I’d offer to trade them to Scott.”

Theo scoffs, “Right.”

“Oh, I assure you,” Monroe disagrees, her eyes glinting in the light as she meets Theo’s eyes,  “I had every intention of returning their corpses to him.”

Theo can’t help it; he snarls at her, straining up against his bonds. She jerks back instinctively but then laughs, delighted.

“ _There_ it is,” She laughs again, “That’s the right dose. Just enough to keep those claws and fangs of yours sheathed, but enough to make you a winning conversationalist.”

Theo forces himself to settle back down, swallow his anger; maybe if he could piss her off enough, she’d kill him in a fit rage before she could do whatever it is she’s planning to do to him, “Your plan failed. They’re safe, out of your reach, and so is the rest of the McCall pack. And if you thought Scott was coming for you hard before, just wait until he finds out you tried to murder some of his pack in his territory. He’s going to hunt you right into the ground.”

But Monroe just frowns at him, “Failed? I think it went better than I could ever have imagined.” Her eyes glint, and she leans down again, “Not only did I get one of Scott’s betas, I got his left-hand man _._ I got his _spymaster_.”

Theo can’t even concentrate on the absurdity of her last two statements; he’s still caught on the absurdity of her first, “One of Scott’s betas?” He snorts out a genuine laugh; so Monroe isn’t as all-knowing as she seems, “Hardly.”

But Monroe just laughs at him, a little disbelievingly, “Oh, please, Theo. I thought you were supposed to be a good liar.”

Theo just smiles at her, nastily, “Whatever you want to believe.”

Monroe drifts back from him some, thoughtfully. Then she shrugs and gestures at someone out of Theo’s eyesight; god, how many more people were even in the room? And how big was it? _What_ was it? Theo’s senses are so muted by the wolfsbane he hadn’t even realized they weren’t alone, though it seems obvious in hindsight.

“Well, Theo,” Monroe tells him as one of her hunters steps into view and hands her something, a small wooden box that smells uncomfortably sharp, “Fortunately, I’m not going to have to take anything you say on faith.”

She holds out the box in her hand, grins at him, and Theo feels the first slow stirrings of dread—kept at bay through sheer force of will and the steadily burning knowledge that Alec, Mason, and Nolan had gotten away safely—in his gut. He doesn’t know what the hell she’s holding but he’s one-hundred percent certain he doesn’t want to find out.

“Tell me something,” He tries, a little desperately now, but he can’t help it, “Getting Scott and the others out of town, Lydia’s prediction—how’d you fake it?”

“I didn’t,” Monroe answers distractedly; she’s pulled a rolling cart over to her, full of instruments and objects that Theo can’t fully see from his vantage point on the table.

She sorts through them for a moment, looking for something in particular. After a long few seconds—Theo dropping his head back down to stare fixedly at the ceiling, trying to control his mounting panic—she finds what she’s looking for, pulls it out and comes back to lean over Theo. She holds what turns out to be a clear capsule of some kind, about as big around as her pinky finger and an inch long, over his face so he can see it.

“Veterinary capsule,” She explains, voice silky and self-satisfied, “Meant just for large animals like you.”

He bares his teeth at her and she grins, pats him condescendingly on the cheek with her free hand. Then she straightens and returns to the cart; to the mysteriously sharp-smelling wooden box. He can hear it as she opens it—the smell getting sharper, teasing at his sense of awareness; he _knows_ that scent—and then a metal clatter as she picks something up from the table, a soft _shir_ as she dips it into whatever’s in the box.

“To answer your question,” Monroe suddenly says as she continues to work, “I didn’t ‘fake’ Lydia’s prediction. I simply gave her something to predict.”

“What if she hadn’t reacted?” Theo comments critically, trying to keep her talking, “Risky.”

“Not really,” Monroe disagrees, unperturbed. She sets down whatever she’s working on and comes back over to lean her hip against the table, arms crossed loosely, studying him, “Did you know, there have only been a few recorded instances in history of banshees joining werewolf packs? I found the data in Gerard’s archives.”

“Good for you,” Theo sneers.

Monroe just smirks at him, her expression clearly saying she knows what he’s trying to do, “This is interesting, Theo. You should listen.” She waits, like she’s checking to see if he is; when he just glares at her she laughs, continues anyway, “Apparently, banshees who join packs become particularly attuned to the pack’s members.”

Theo’s brow furrows before he can force his expression still; was Monroe implying…? But there _aren’t_ any McCall pack members in Visalia, as far as Theo knows. _Or_ , he realizes, Monroe’s smirk widening in lazy satisfaction as she watches the realization break over his face, _not_ current _ones._

“I always did wonder where Isaac Lahey ended up after he left Beacon Hills. Who would have thought _Visalia_ , of all places?” She muses, then shrugs and returns to her cart with its veterinary capsule— _meant for large animals like you_ —and its mysterious box, “Anyway.”

But she doesn’t continue right away. Instead she fusses a bit more with the items on her cart; if Theo had to guess, he’d say she’s working on putting whatever is contained in the box into the capsule.

A capsule she almost undoubtedly means to make him swallow.

 _Shit_ , he thinks desperately, helplessly. He pulls at his bindings again, but even with the added strength from Monroe lowering the dosage of the wolfsbane drug further, he’s still too weak to do anything about them. Whatever was coming, he wasn’t going to be escaping it.

Finally Monroe comes back over to him, clear capsule in hand. Theo looks at it and sees that it's now full of...something. Monroe sees him looking at it and smirks, holds it between two fingers directly over his face so that he can see it better. Theo wants to glare, or look away—he doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction—but he’s morbidly curious, and more to the point wants some sense of what’s coming, how to try and prepare himself. So he squints at the capsule, flares his eyes best he can, and feels his brow furrow, confused.

The capsule looks like it’s filled with tiny pieces of wood.

“Poor Theo,” Monroe murmurs sympathetically, “That drug really must be messing with your head.”

She rolls the capsule into the palm of her hand, out of sight, and straightens. Then she motions again for her waiting hunter to come forward. He does, stopping directly behind Theo’s head; Theo resists the urge to tilt his head back to look at him.

“It’s mistletoe,” Monroe finally explains, “Splinters of mistletoe. I’ve found it’s a little hardier than wolfsbane, lends itself to some...less traditional uses.”

She nods at the hunter, who takes hold of either side of Theo’s face between his meaty palms. Theo tries to jerk out of his grip but the hunter just tightens his hands, slams Theo’s head back straight. When Theo has blinked the resulting bursts of color out of his eyes and managed to flick them back over to Monroe, she looks pensive.

“Believe it or not, I’d really rather not do this,” She tells him, and strangely enough Theo hears a ring of sincerity in her voice, “It’s incredibly effective, but even for your kind...”

She hesitates, runs her eyes over his immobilized hands—at his currently human nails—flicks her eyes up to his mouth, full of blunt human teeth, as much as he might wish for his fangs.

“Even for your kind, it feels a little gratuitously cruel,” She finishes.

“So don’t do it,” Theo grits out, “You’re not some helpless puppet here, you’re the puppet _master_.”

“Maybe,” She allows with a small smile, then adds, “But I just can’t bring myself to believe you’ll betray the McCall pack without some incentive.”

And she’s right, and they both know it, and there’s nothing to stop what’s coming, so Theo just bares his teeth at her in a vicious smile and says, “Even with an incentive, you’re going to be disappointed.”

“No,” Monroe assures him, quietly confident, and Theo can’t help the despair that surges through him, “I’m not.”

She nods to the hunter, who starts to dig his fingers into the hinge of Theo’s jaw, forcing it open. Theo—who has nothing to lose, at this point—struggles as much as he can, actually manages to slip out of the hunter’s grip for a split-second before he’s caught again, slammed back flat. Thirty more long seconds of manipulating Theo’s jaw and the hunter gets it open, drives his fingers against the edge of the bone so Theo can’t close it again.

“Listen, Theo,” Monroe tells him, almost regretfully, “We haven’t figured out how to...undo this particular conversation starter, so there will be no ‘healing’ you once we start. But I promise you, once you tell me everything I want to know, I’ll end it.”

She smooths her free hand back over his forehead, looking deeply into his eyes.

“Okay? Just tell me what I want to know and I’ll end it.”

 _Go fuck yourself_ , Theo thinks at her, viciously, unable to say it out loud with his jaw held forcibly open. Monroe gives him a rueful smile and then takes hold of his chin with her free hand, forces it sideways—her hunter lackey moving with her—so that she can raise her right hand, capsule clasped within it, and drive it into his mouth. He chokes at the intrusion but Monroe is relentless, keeps shoving until she can force the capsule into the back of his throat. He desperately tries to keep his muscles from contracting around it as she withdraws but it’s a losing battle; he can feel it as the capsule starts to work its way down into his stomach.

Monroe gestures and the hunter releases Theo, who jerks his head to the side, coughs harshly; he can’t feel anything yet but he knows it's only a matter of seconds before the capsule dissolves. _Shit, shit_ , he thinks wildly, helplessly panicked. He’s so focused on the phantom feeling of the capsule that he nearly misses it when Monroe orders the hunter to release the straps, when she removes the needle of wolfsbane from his arm.

But he _doesn’t_ miss it; the second the last of the straps are released and the needle is removed he rolls, off the table and away from them. But Monroe and her hunter don’t look worried, just watch with mild interest as he manages to stumble a few feet away, runs into the rolling cart Monroe had used to assemble her torture capsule. The wheels squeak backwards a few inches and Theo staggers, tries to keep his feet but falls to one knee.

And then the capsule must finish dissolving.

 _Jesus chr..._ Theo starts to think as the first slivers of mistletoe hit his system, and then he can’t think anymore. He can’t help the howl of pain that tears from his throat, is equally helpless to stop his body from gagging, trying to reject the foreign objects. But that just makes it worse, drives some of the splinters back up into his throat, where they stick, burning like acid. Theo falls to his hands and knees, barely able to see his fingers as they clench against the floor, white with strain, his vision blurry.

He moans in pain and is barely aware of it when Monroe drops carefully to her knees before him. She reaches forward and takes his chin, tilts his face up so that he’s looking at her; he coughs, and can feel blood starting to run over his lips, down his chin.

“Theo,” Monroe tells him gently, brings her other hand forward so she can stroke it over the side of his face, “I can make it stop.”

That brings him back to himself just enough that he can yank his head out of her grip, but all it does is cause him to topple backwards, unbalanced. He hears Monroe sigh and sees it through blurry eyes when she steps over him, digs her hands underneath his shoulders and drags him into a sitting position up against a wall.

“Theo,” She repeats, more sharply this time, “I can make it stop. I _can_ ,” She repeats when Theo just makes a pained sound and tries again to jerk away from her, “Just tell me what I want to know. Tell me about the McCall pack.”

“Fuck—fuck you,” Theo manages to pant out, then has to turn his head to the side as his stomach heaves and he vomits up a mouthful of blood and bile.

“This is pointless, Theo,” Monroe reproches him gently, “Your body can’t dissolve those splinters in time to save you, and even if it could, you’d end up dead of the released poison. So tell me what I want to know and let me end it.”

 _No_ , Theo thinks forcefully, but there’s a desperate corner of his brain that knows that he isn’t going to be able to take much more of this; eventually the pain is going to break him, and he’s going to tell Monroe anything she wants to hear—everything she wants to hear—just for the _chance_ that she’ll keep her word and end it quickly.

“What _is it_ with you McCall pack supernaturals?” Monroe wonders, sounding equal parts amused and annoyed, “Not a sensible bone in any of your bodies, I swear.”

Theo just closes his eyes, tells himself, _as long as possible_. He’d hold out as long as he could, as pointless as he knows it’s going to be; he’d do it in thanks to Scott, and Lydia, and Alec, and Nolan, and all of the rest of the McCall pack, for giving him the last few months. For letting him stay, for giving him some semblance of a home, a pack, even if in trade for Theo’s help with Monroe. _As long as possible_ , he swears, and fills his mind with thoughts of the pack: dinners at the McCall house with Ms. McCall ribbing him companionably; lacrosse nights with the Sheriff and his dry sense of humor; patrols with Malia and Derek and Scott, laughing and whooping as they chase each other through the Preserve. Nolan, touching his scarred neck and grinning at Theo, alive and well and happy. Stiles and Lydia, camped out on his couch and eating all his food. Corey and Mason, unapologetically monopolizing his table and quizzing him on famous battles for their history exams. Alec and his apologetic grin when Theo would come downstairs to find him once more on Theo’s couch, his perfectly good apartment with its perfectly good bed ignored.

And Liam.

 _God, Liam_ , Theo thinks, and feels a spasm of pain that has nothing to do with the mistletoe splinters currently burrowing their way into his stomach, his throat. The thought of him is almost too much to hold, too painful, but Theo latches onto it, lets himself get a little lost in the memory of him and Liam on the lacrosse field after Scott and Liam’s fight, or Liam kneeling by Theo when he’d been dying of wolfsbane poisoning. Of Liam, climbing into his bed some nights with his scent hot and stinging with grief, how some mornings they’d wake up pressed against each other, Theo’s nose buried in Liam’s ridiculous hair and Liam’s legs tangled with his.

 _Sorry_ , Theo tells his mental Liam helplessly, even though he’s not sure for what, exactly; _I’m so sorry._

Another spasm of pain wracks his body and he chokes on another mouthful of blood, brought forcefully back to the present, his eyes snapping open. But when he manages to focus them through the haze of agony lighting up his every nerve, Monroe isn’t looking at him anymore. Her face is twisted in a furious expression, lips peeled back from her teeth in a savage snarl as she stares out and away at something Theo can’t see.

 _What_ , Theo manages to think, blearily, just as Monroe says, low and disbelieving, “No. _No_ , it’s not _possible_.”

But whoever she’s talking to doesn’t bother to respond; instead, there’s a loud _crack_ of gunfire and the hunter next to Monroe—who had started reaching for the rifle strapped across his back—stumbles and then collapses next to Theo, a perfect bullet hole torn through his heart. Theo stares at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, the shock dulling some of his pain, and then the room erupts into chaos.

Theo tries to follow it, tries to sharpen his senses so he can pull apart the cacophony of sound, the sudden choking scents, but all he can hear is his own frantic heartbeat, his own labored breathing; can only smell his own blood and sweat and bile. Another spasm of pain locks his muscles and Theo gasps, mouth locked open in a pained grimace, and he feels himself falling sideways, barely registers it when he hits the ground and the back of his skull cracks against the hard concrete. He just lays there in senseless agony and gives up on trying to figure out what’s going on, just waits and thinks, _please, make it stop_ , unsure who he’s asking, or what he’s asking for.

“Theo!” Someone suddenly shouts, and Theo stirs some, tries to open his eyes but can’t.

There’s a scrambling sound next to him and then the barest feeling of warmth like balm against his agonized skin, like someone has kneeled close enough next to him for Theo to feel their heat.

“Liam, don’t!” Someone else orders, “You don’t know what she did to him, you could make it worse.”

 _Liam…?_ Theo repeats hazily, and that’s enough to get him to open his eyes, just a crack, just enough to see Liam’s face hovering over his own, his expression broken open and terrified.

“Derek, come here, smell this for me and tell me if it is what I think it is.”

_Lydia…?_

“Mistletoe,” Someone confirms harshly; _Derek_. Derek confirms harshly, his voice low and furious.

“She forced him to swallow splinters of mistletoe, look at these capsules—they’re gel, they dissolve in the stomach, release whatever’s inside.”

“Jesus christ,” Someone else says weakly, while another unknown person whispers, “Oh, god.”

 _Stiles_ , Theo realizes, _Corey_ , and then another spasm hits him and his whole body cramps, and he can’t help the pained, broken moan that escapes.

“We have to do something,” He hears Liam say frantically, “Scott, we have to help him somehow.”

“I don’t—” Someone— _Scott_ —Scott says, “Derek, Chris, do you know…? Have you ever heard…?”

“No,” Derek admits, tone hard but dripping with regret. Argent echoes him a second later.

“The hospital,” Liam interjects, “Scott, your mom. My dad. They’ll know—they’ll be able—they’ll think of _something_.”

“Liam,” Scott tries, gently.

“I don’t care!” Liam shouts, and then he puts his hands on Theo like he doesn’t give a shit about Derek’s previous order anymore; Theo feels some of his pain draw away and he gasps, helplessly, then moans as it comes roaring back, overwhelming Liam’s ability to take it, “We have to try _something_ , we can’t just let him die like this!”

“I might—” Lydia starts, then pauses, hesitant, like she doesn’t want to give anyone false hope, “I have an idea, I can talk to your mom and Liam’s dad about it. I don’t know if it’ll work, but…”

She trails off, and Theo can almost feel her heavy gaze. _Nowhere else to go but up_ , Theo thinks, a little hysterically, drunk and senseless as he is with pain; Liam’s hands on his skin feel incredible but it just sharpens the feeling of agony everywhere else.

“Okay,” Scott decides quietly, and then again, more firmly, “Okay. Derek, can you take him? Lydia, Stiles, Corey, grab everything that you think might be relevant to take with us, who knows what might help.”

There’s a rush of sound and movement as Lydia and Stiles move to obey, and then Theo feels the air around him shift as, presumably, Derek kneels down next to him.

“Liam,” Derek says softly.

“I’m taking his pain,” Liam snaps, and doesn’t take his hands away.

“Okay,” Derek tells him soothingly, “Then keep doing that, but you’ve got to let me take him.”

Theo gasps out a wordless sound of agony as he’s jostled, as he’s slowly lifted up and off the ground; Liam keeps his hands glued to him the entire time, but as Theo’s pain crests with the movement he gasps, too. _Don’t_ , Theo wants to tell him, _don’t do that_. But he can’t get his lips to move.

His head falls back far enough that he can see some of the rest of the room through his blurry vision. He sees a few crumpled forms, some of their clothes shredded like they’d had claws ripped through them, blood pooling under their prone bodies. But it isn’t until Derek starts to move, starts to head wherever he’s heading—following Scott, Argent, and the others as they hurry out—that he sees something that briefly overcomes the pain tearing apart his body enough to let him sharpen his gaze, focus on the sight.

It’s Monroe, flat on her back, sightless eyes staring upward.

Her throat is slashed and there’s an expression of unadulterated hatred on her face. But it’s the hole in her chest that really catches Theo’s attention; too big to be a bullet hole. Someone—someone had put their clawed fist through her chest and shredded her heart.

 _Oh_ , Theo thinks as he stares at the sight.

And then the pain comes roaring back, and he doesn’t remember anything else.

\---

Theo wakes up, _again_ , and it’s even more of surprise this time.

Something is beeping, repetitively and monotonously just a few feet from where he’s lying. He tilts his chin up to look at it, something soft giving way below his head as he does, and sees a heart monitor. As he watches it beeps again, a steady spike driving its way up on the screen before leveling back out. He watches it for a long stretch of minutes, groggy and a little hypnotized, before he realizes that it’s synchronized to the heartbeat he can feel in his own chest.

 _What_ , Theo thinks, and tilts his chin back down, the beeping of the heart monitor picking up pace as his pulse spikes with his confusion. The change in tempo is apparently enough to wake Scott, sprawled out in one of the hospital’s poor excuses for armchairs, one hand over his face. He jerks and looks around, a little frantically, until his eyes come to rest on Theo—who’s squinting at him, bewildered—and then he relaxes some.

“Christ,” He mutters, sounding exhausted and not at all well-rested for all that he was just asleep.

Then he sits up, groaning, and rubs his hands roughly over his face. When he drops them, he grins softly, warmly, at Theo.

“You’re awake,” He finally says.

From the badly disguised relief in Scott’s voice, that was maybe not a guarantee. Theo shifts some in the hospital bed—hears his heart-rate monitor spike again as he does—and feels various parts of his body protest, but overall he feels...well.

Overall he doesn’t feel like he’s dying, which is a significant improvement from the last time he remembers being awake.

“What happened?” He rasps out, throat feeling dry and raw but like it’s from dehydration, and not because a psychotic werewolf hunter shoved a gel capsule full of mistletoe splinters down his throat.

Scott frowns and looks around a bit, holds up a finger and then disappears from the room briefly. When he comes back, he’s got a cup full of water, a straw bobbing merrily within it as Scott pads over to the bed and holds it close enough to Theo that he can take a drink. Theo gives the straw, and then Scott, an incredibly dry look, but Scott just raises an eyebrows and waits. Eventually the burning in Theo’s throat overcomes his pride and he catches the straw with his lips, takes a few drinks, and protests when Scott draws it away.

“You gotta go slow, Theo,” Scott chides him, setting the cup down on the side table near Theo’s head. Then he seems to catch himself and he laughs, helplessly and a little disbelieving, before collapsing—gently—onto the side of Theo’s mattress, “God, how weird is this? Even with all the insanity that’s struck Beacon Hills over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a werewolf in a hospital bed. Well,” He stops, a thought apparently striking him, “There was that one time with Derek, but he was technically human, then.”

“Yeah, so I repeat,” Theo says in response, voice still rasping but sounding a little better, “What _happened_?”

Scott frowns at him thoughtfully, then asks, “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Theo considers. Pain, mostly. The last thing he remembers is pain, overwhelming and all-consuming, but that’s not what Scott’s asking. He closes his eyes, ignores his mind’s attempts to shy away from the memories—drenched as they are with agony—and then opens them again, a vision coming back to the fore.

“Monroe is dead,” Theo says slowly, almost testing it; he glances up at Scott as he does, sees a flicker of fierce satisfaction cross his face, “I saw her as Derek was carrying me out of...wherever the hell we were.”

“Warehouse, of course,” Scott answers, rolling his eyes like Monroe’s lack of creativity in criminal lairs personally offends him, “A few miles over in Forest Ranch. She must have been using it just for the attack, there were no long-term signs of occupation.”

Which would explain why neither Theo, any of his contacts, or the hunting party had previously identified it. But that begs a different question.

“How’d you find it?” Theo asks curiously, meaning _how’d you find me_ , but; to-may-to, to-mah-to.

“Now that,” Scott tells him dryly, “is an interesting story. Have you ever been simultaneously yelled at by four separate, equally-panicked people at the same time?”

“I don’t...think so,” Theo replies, a little lost as to what this has to do with Scott finding Monroe’s heretofore unknown, temporary warehouse.

“Lucky you,” Scott mutters. Then he sighs, “We found the warehouse—found you—because just past Yuba City, _Isaac Lahey_ called me, completely out of the blue.”

“Ah,” Theo says, that particular puzzle-piece clicking into place; Scott gives him a strange look, so he explains, “Monroe, back before the—” Theo waves his hand at his own prone body demonstratively, “—she strongly implied that she’d triggered Lydia’s prediction by going after Isaac. So he got away from her hunters?”

Scott snorts, and there’s a hint of pride in his expression when he says, “Didn’t have to. _He_ found _them_. A few hours before they were supposed to start their attack, apparently. Isaac…” He pauses, his gaze going distant, his mind somewhere else, “He’s pretty good at staying ahead of hunters. Had a good teacher.”

There’s a story hidden in the heavy shadows of Scott’s simple statement, one that Theo doesn’t know the full shape of but is almost positive has something to do with a certain Argent archer; _rest in peace_. He waits, gives Scott the time he needs to pull his head back out of whatever memory he’d fallen into. It takes almost half a minute but eventually Scott shakes his head, gives Theo a quick, apologetic smile—Theo shaking his head gently; _don’t apologize_ —and then continues his explanation.

“Isaac managed to capture one of the hunters, and Monroe must not have sent the A-team after him because this hunter broke like a cheap vase, just started babbling about some crazy plan to attack Beacon Hills. Isaac didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but it’s _Beacon Hills_ , so he called.”

“And he was...one of the four?” Theo hazards, remembering Scott’s earlier statement.

“The first of them,” Scott confirms wryly, “Because just as soon as I’d pulled over to try and figure out what the hell Isaac was ranting about, Mason called Corey in a blind panic, and Lydia started screaming.”

Theo blinks, hearing in his head Monroe saying _apparently, banshees who join packs become particularly attuned to the pack’s members_. The thought ignites a weird flurry of emotion in his chest, which Theo feels completely incapable of handling at the moment, so he forcefully sets it aside.

“Who was the fourth?” He asks, partially for the distraction but also because he’s curious.

“Parrish,” Scott replies, “He called Stiles—well. First he called Lydia, but she was—”

“Screaming,” Theo cuts in wryly; Scott smirks at him appreciatively.

Then he continues, “Anyway, once we managed to piece together enough of the different stories to figure out what was going on, we all turned around and headed straight back for Beacon Hills. My dad, Stiles’ dad, and Parrish had already left Redding.”

Theo nods, but then he stops, frowns, “The hunter told Isaac where the warehouse was?”

Why would Monroe have told a throwaway-hunter—which the ones going after Isaac had clearly _been_ —about the warehouse she was going to use?

Scott shakes his head, “No. We had to track it down by following a handful of the hunters that went after Alec and the others, after the hunters turned around. That’s why it took us a while to get to you.”

“Alec,” Theo suddenly realizes, and goes to sit up; behind him, his heart-rate monitor shrieks a warning as Theo’s pulse spikes.

“He’s fine, he’s _fine_ ,” Scott assures him, diving forward so that he can press Theo back flat, keeps his hand there and squeezes Theo’s shoulder gently, “Mason, Nolan, Alec—they’re all fine.”

Theo lays back down stiffly, closes his eyes and forces himself to breathe in slowly through his nose, trying to calm his pulse. He still feels so damn _weak_. Scott eyes him like he’s considering whether he should stop filling Theo in, so Theo speaks, tries to distract him.

“They got to Shohreh okay?” He asks.

Scott gives him a narrow-eyed look like he knows what Theo is doing, but answers anyway, “They did.” Then his expression goes a little rueful, “In fact, we had a bit of trouble getting them to leave Yreka. Apparently you gave Alec _very_ clear instructions.”

Theo smirks, but it’s a little wobbly, “In my defense, I had very good reasons for being such a dick.”

But Scott doesn’t take him up on the offered joke. He studies Theo carefully, his expression sobering, “You saved their lives.”

Theo shifts uncomfortably under the scrutiny, reaches for another distraction, “You never finished telling me why I’m in a hospital bed. And why do I still feel as weak as—”

“A human?” Scott offers wryly. Then he glances at the room, he eyes flicking from the heart-rate monitor, to Theo prone on the bed, to a set of machines near his side that Theo had noted earlier but has no context for, “The mistletoe splinters...there was no way to get them _out_ of you, but as your body slowly dissolved them, they essentially turned your blood into poison.”

 _Jesus_ , Theo thinks blankly.

“Lydia…” Scott starts, “She had an initial idea—blood transfusions—and then Dr. Geyer and my mom refined it a bit, added kidney and liver dialysis to help get the toxins out faster.”

That...had been a surprisingly elegant solution. Theo would have to thank Lydia and Ms. McCall for it, next he saw them. And Dr. Geyer too, of course, though…

“Liam told his father?” Theo asks.

“And his mother. And Nolan and Mason told their parents, Malia told her dad...” Scott confirms, adds; his expression twists a little bit, and Theo isn’t sure where the disappointment he sees there is directed, but he bets it’s inward, “We’re done trying to keep secrets from the people closest to us out of some misguided attempt to protect them.”

Theo doesn’t know what to say—he doesn’t have any clueless relations to _tell_ , after all—so he doesn’t say anything. Scott shakes his head like he’s clearing it, resettles on the mattress.

“Speaking of Dr. Geyer, he should be in any minute,” Scott tells him, “You’re due for your last round of transfusions and dialysis soon, and then he and my mom think your healing should be able to take over, finish clearing the last of the toxins without further damage.”

“Fantastic,” Theo mutters, but only half-sarcastically; being used as a human pincushion was an irritation he’d rather avoid, but he’d suffer significantly worse indignities to finally get the last of Monroe’s poison out of his body.

They drift into companionable silence for a few minutes, Scott’s attention caught by something happening elsewhere in the hospital. Theo’s senses are still out of whack so he can’t hear much beyond the room, though even if he could, his thoughts are so syrupy he’s not sure he’d be able to absorb much. He’s just starting to drift off, his eyelids getting heavy, when Scott speaks again.

“They were all here, you know.”

Theo blinks a few times, coming back to fully awake, and then squints at Scott, “Who was all where?”

“The pack. They were all here—Derek, Stiles, Lydia, Malia, Nolan, Mason, Corey, Alec, Chris,” He hesitates a second, adds, “Liam. Stiles’ dad, Parrish, and my dad would have been here, too, but they’re out dealing with the crime scenes. Dr. Geyer and my mom wouldn’t let any of them in here with you while they were working, so they colonized the third floor waiting room.”

That same slow-burning maelstrom of _something_ starts up in Theo’s chest again and he swallows, has to look away from Scott for a beat.

“Everyone was pretty much falling asleep standing, though, so once Dr. Geyer and my mom announced that you’d pull through around three o’clock this morning, I made most of them go home to get some rest,” Scott continues, “Even then, they wouldn’t agree to go until I swore I’d stay and send them regular proof-of-life videos of you breathing, like some criminal negotiating a ransom. Speaking of…”

He pulls out his phone, unlocks and points it at Theo, who gives the lens a dry look and tells it, “You’re all _insane_.”

Scott just barks out a laugh and then turns the camera around, gives it a goofy thumbs-up and announces, as if the rest of the pack would somehow miss it otherwise, “Theo’s awake!”

He’s silent for a few seconds as he works on sending the video, and then he locks his phone and slides it back into his pocket.

“You said ‘most of them,’” Theo asks once he’s done, curious, “What did you mean?”

Scott sighs, rubs the tips of his fingers over his brow, gives Theo a rueful grin, “Liam and Alec wouldn’t go.”

“Oh,” Theo says stupidly.

Scott gets an exasperated look on his face, which Theo thinks is patently unfair; _Theo_ didn’t refuse to leave the hospital after learning that he’d be perfectly fine. He’d been out cold for the whole ordeal.

“So where are they?” Theo wonders, and silently curses when his heart-rate monitor speeds up in its beeping.

Scott snorts a laugh, sounding equal parts amused and long-suffering, “Around about seven, my mom threatened to turn Alec into a throw pillow if she tripped over him one more time, and Dr. Geyer threatened to ground Liam for life if he didn’t stop pestering him about your condition. I figured the best thing to do was get them out and distracted.”

“And they cooperated?” Theo replies skeptically.

“Of course not,” Scott says dryly, “But they didn’t have much of a choice once I called Malia and Derek to come get them. Malia took Alec to run the Preserve. Like, several times.” Then Scott pauses, looks pensive, “I...don’t actually know what Derek did with Liam.”

Theo can only imagine; Derek’s patience for Liam’s more volatile bouts of temper was impressively vast, but often took on...creative casts. He laughs quietly to himself as he considers it, thinks about Liam’s no-doubt sour expression and Derek’s completely unmoved, and immovable, response.

“Hey, Theo?” Scott says, sounding suddenly tentative.

“Hmm?” Theo hums absently.

“Can I ask you something?” Scott asks, and Theo focuses, intrigued and a little a concerned by Scott’s sudden shift in demeanor.

“I don’t see how I can stop you. I’m a pretty captive audience,” Theo points out, trying to lighten the sudden turn in mood.

Scott flashes him a distracted smile, but almost immediately pulls his bottom lip into his mouth, bites it.

When he speaks, finally, it’s to ask, “You know Beacon Hills is your home, right?”

“What?” Theo replies blankly, and his goddamn heart-rate monitor spikes _again_.

“Beacon Hills is your _home_ ,” Scott repeats, forcefully, all traces of tentativeness gone from his voice. He studies Theo’s face—Theo has no idea what it’s doing, so he has no idea what Scott’s seeing—and then he continues, “You know you don’t have to, I don’t know, earn your place here, right?”

Now Theo is really lost; his mouth drops open a bit and he just stares at Scott, speechless. Scott stares back at him, his expression slowly twisting to become equally stricken, and then he groans—it’d be a far more comic sound if Theo wasn’t slowly panicking—and buries his face in his hands.

“There’s a long line of people that are going to kill me,” He mutters through his fingers, “Starting with Lydia and my mother and ending with Liam. They kept telling me... God, I’m such an _idiot_.”

“Scott, I—” Theo tries, and then stops; he doesn’t know what the hell to _say_.

But Scott’s on a self-flagellating _roll_ now, apparently, “And I can’t even _blame_ you! Back at the house all those months ago, when I asked you to stay... _Christ_ —it must have sounded like I was cutting you some kind of _deal_.”

 _You weren’t?_ Theo thinks, but has the good sense not to say.

“I knew,” Scott confesses, and Theo would be concerned with the frustration clearly laced through his words if it wasn’t so clearly directed at Scott himself, “I _knew_ something was off even after that first conversation, but there always seemed to be some—some... _emergency_ , something that had to be handled immediately, and I always forgot. And then you’d make some comment and I’d realize it again, but…”

He trails off, and his frustration just seems to drain away to be replaced by a weighty, heavy sadness. He looks away from Theo, ostensibly down at the singularly- _un_ fascinating hospital floor, but Theo knows he’s not seeing anything actually in front of his face. When he raises his eyes and looks back at Theo, his expression is somber, serious; Scott facing down a  life-changing situation with focus, determination, a calm so settled as to be bedrock.

“Theo,” He says, quietly but implacably, “You are _a part of this pack_. Not a contact, or a friend, or even an ally—you’re _a part_ of it.”

“Scott…” Theo starts, but trails off almost immediately.

But Scott just closes his eyes briefly, and when he opens them again, they’re flared alpha red, “Theo.”

He waits; he just sits, and watches Theo through his red eyes, and waits. The maelstrom in Theo’s chest, reignited by Scott’s words, has demolished all of Theo’s clever distractions, his usual cache of rationalizations— _you’re here because you’re useful, you’re here because they need someone to do their dirty work_ —and behind him, his heart-rate monitor is going wild. Theo meets Scott’s red-eyed stare and feels his own eyes flare in response, even through his exhaustion, even through the last remnants of the mistletoe; he feels his own eyes flare golden as he meets Scott’s—his _alpha’s_ —steady gaze.

“Okay,” He finally says, helplessly, meaning it with every bone, every fiber of his being, “Okay.”

Scott watches him for a second longer and then he blinks, looking a bit surprised at himself, and the moment breaks under his own weight. But it’s not _gone_ ; the ember that Scott ignited all those months ago flares to a flame, something steadily burning and tucked—but not hidden, not kept safeguarded from the world—inside Theo’s ribs. When Scott smiles at him, looking a little embarrassed at his own intensity, hand going to scratch awkwardly at the back of his own neck, Theo finds himself smiling just as wide, just as helplessly back.

They probably would have continued dopily grinning at each other for a while after that, but Ms. McCall steps into the room, glances between them, and raises an eyebrow, “Do I want to know what the two of you are smiling about?”

“Just...clearing up a misunderstanding,” Scott explains, flashing Theo another grin as he looks at his mother.

“Oh, finally took care of that, did you?” Ms. McCall asks her son dryly; Scott colors some, but Ms. McCall just smiles fondly, wraps an arm around his shoulders and squeezes him. Then she looks at Theo and her smile softens some, “Welcome home, Theo. Glad to have you back.”

Theo feels his breathing hitch, embarrassingly enough, but he manages a wobbly grin, “Glad to be here.”

Ms. McCall laughs a little under her breath and then releases her son, pushes him gently towards the door, “Alright, go wait outside while Dr. Geyer and I finish the last of Theo’s treatments. I’m not above turning _you_ into a throw pillow, either.”

Scott grins and goes, but he stops at the door, one hand on the jamb to look back at Theo, “I’ll see you when you’re done, okay?”

Theo nods once, his whole chest warmed by that flame held between his ribs, “Yeah. See you...see you then.”

\---

Theo makes Scott take him home once he’s done, even though Ms. McCall and Dr. Geyer want to keep him under observation until they’re sure his healing has fully taken over. Theo plays dirty, considering Scott’s earlier confession, tells Scott _I want to go home_ with just enough emphasis on the last word that Scott crumples like a cheap suit even though his expression clearly says he knows what Theo’s doing.

Dr. Geyer watches from the doorway as Scott helps Theo out of bed, Theo’s arm over his shoulders; he’d tried arguing, even after Ms. McCall had assured him _it’s not going to do you any good_ and left to go deal with her other patients, grown resigned to the fact that ignoring the advice of trained medical professionals is practically a McCall pack membership requirement, “I wasn’t aware pig-headedness was another werewolf special ability.”

Theo snorts absently as he concentrates on shifting his weight onto Scott, not falling over, “I highly doubt your son needed the bite to display that particular characteristic.”

He winces immediately after he’s done speaking and glances up at Dr. Geyer, but Dr. Geyer isn’t insulted or annoyed; his expression is twisted like he’s trying to hold back laughter.

“No, he really didn’t,” He says, then he sighs and gestures to the doorway; _fine, fine_ , “Just so you know, you end up back here because you, I don’t know, fall out of bed and crack your head open, I’m going to be merciless in saying _I told you so_.”

“Fair enough,” Theo agrees, then says _wait_ to Scott just as they’re about to pass Dr. Geyer in the doorway. Theo bites his bottom lip, meets Dr. Geyer’s steady gaze, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Dr. Geyer tells him, then grins, “Though, considering how many times you’ve apparently saved my son’s life, maybe I should be thanking _you_.”

Theo laughs a little, “Let’s call it even, then.”

“Deal,” Dr. Geyer agrees, and claps Theo once—gently—on the shoulder, “Go on, then. At least get home to your own bed if you’re not going to stay here.”

Theo falls asleep in Scott’s—Stiles’? Whatever—Jeep on the way back to Theo’s apartment, his head tilted against the window. Scott wakes him up when they arrive and gets his shoulders back underneath Theo’s arm, and they shuffle their way slowly through the lobby and to the elevator. Once inside, Scott props Theo up against one of the walls and hits the button for the floor below Theo’s; Theo frowns, but then he can’t help the spill of—admittedly, probably inappropriate—laughter that escapes him.

“Doors still broken on my floor?” He comments mirthfully.

Scott gives him a dry look, “Derek said he’ll send you the bill.”

“Might as well just send it to directly to Peter,” Theo replies, closing his eyes and sagging some more against the wall, “All things considered.”

They get out on the floor below Theo’s and then head for the stairwell, where Scott helps Theo laboriously work his way up the stairs until they reach Theo’s floor. Theo sharpens his senses but doesn’t hear Alec across the hall; Scott notices his attention as he’s pulling out his keyring to unlock Theo’s door.

“Malia still has him out in the Preserve, I think. He was pretty badly shaken up,” Scott explains quietly.

“Shit,” Theo mutters, wincing, thinking of the last few minutes before his capture, of Alec pleading, _please don’t ask me to leave you here to die_.

“He understands why you did what you did,” Scott assures him gently, then he makes a face, “Mostly, anyway. He was having trouble letting Mason and Nolan out of his sight at the hospital, but once my mom let him into the room once you’d recovered enough, he relaxed some.”

“Still going to be awhile before he forgives me,” Theo predicts grimly.

Scott smiles sympathetically as he gets Theo’s door unlocked and rolled open, “He’s probably not the only one, fair warning.”

He almost definitely means additional pack members beyond Liam, but Liam is still the first one Theo thinks of; he doesn’t know _how_ Liam is going to make him pay for nearly dying in front of him—again—but he knows Liam will, somehow.

“Well,” Theo concludes finally, “They all know where to find me when they want to start yelling.”

He tilts a tired grin at Scott and Scott smiles back; _yeah, they do_. They hobble their way inside the apartment and Theo stops dead, Scott obliviously rolling the door shut behind him. When he finishes that and notices Theo’s stock-still posture, though, he turns back to look at the apartment and then full-body flinches.

“Oh, right. Sorry, I forgot you hadn’t seen it yet,” Scott apologizes, “We were going to clean up while you were still at the hospital, but, well…”

Theo’s apartment is a mess. The map is gone, which makes sense—Monroe had said that her hunters had brought it to her—but apparently the hunters had decided to be _very_ thorough in their search for additional research; a good portion of the _tchotchkes_ and other random items given to Theo by the pack and stuffed into his bookshelves are strewn across the floor, the fragile ones among them shattered. Theo spots Malia’s ‘pack’ of wire coyotes in the middle of the room, some of their limbs bent at awkward angles. Lydia’s terrifying M.I.T. beaver mascot is lying forlornly on its side, its stuffing spilled out like Monroe’s hunters thought he’d hidden something inside of it.

Theo’s scent must be doing something dramatic because Scott’s suddenly tanks and he says hotly, “I don’t even know why they did all this. They already had your map and notebooks.”

“They did it because they enjoyed it,” Theo tells him lowly, exhausted by the whole...everything, “They did it because they could.”

“Well, they’re dead now,” Scott mutters viciously, and Theo looks at him in surprise; usually that fact would bother Scott, not bring him comfort. Then Scott brightens some, grins, “Guess this means we’re going to have to go on a lot more road-trips to help you restock.”

Theo just snorts, but the ache in his chest subsides some. Scott must notice the minute shaking of Theo’s limbs, then, because he makes a small sound and gets them moving again towards the World’s Most Impractical Staircase. It’s made significantly more impractical now given Theo’s condition, its winding nature and narrow design complicating Scott’s attempts to help Theo up it. Halfway up, Scott mutters _who the hell designed this thing, anyway_ , and Theo starts laughing, which nearly unbalances them; Scott makes a wild grab for the railing and catches it, his other hand clenching in the back of Theo’s shirt. _Sorry, sorry_ , Theo apologizes breathlessly, still laughing, but Scott just rolls his eyes and finishes getting them up the stairs, then deposits Theo on his bed with a gusty _oof_.

Theo lays flat on his back, his legs still hanging off the edge of the bed, and strongly debates whether the effort to move the rest of the way up his bed is worth it. Scott glances around like he’s trying to determine if Theo might need anything else, so Theo kicks out a leg until he can smack Scott lightly on the thigh with his foot, get his attention.

“I’ll be fine, really,” He assures him when Scott looks down, “Your mom and Dr. Geyer said it’d take a few more hours for my healing to finish clearing my system, but that all I really need to do is sleep it off.”

Scott looks conflicted, “I don’t like the idea of just leaving you here alone.”

Theo lets his head flop to the side so he can give Scott a skeptical look, “You’re telling me you really don’t have anything else you need to be doing? Like helping your dad and the Sheriff clean up Monroe’s mess, maybe?”

That lands; Scott grimaces. Theo takes a deep breath and then forces himself to slide the rest of the way up the bed, wrestle the covers out from underneath and then over himself, drops his head onto his pillow. He looks at Scott once he’s settled; _see? Everything’s fine_.

“Alec will be back soon, I bet,” Theo offers to try and sweeten the deal, “And Derek, too, probably. I won’t be alone that long.”

Scott bites his lip, but he must really actually need to go help his dad and the Sheriff because he gives in soon enough, “I’m going to text Derek and Alec on my way out, let them know you’re here, have them come check up on you.”

“Fine, okay,” Theo agrees, his eyes already slipping shut.

He must fall asleep almost immediately because he doesn't hear Scott leave. The next thing he knows he’s blinking himself slowly awake, his supernatural senses back, apparently; he can hear arguing out in the hallway in front of his front door. A few seconds later and he’s tagged the voices as Derek and Liam.

“Liam, stop. Your dad and Melissa were clear that Theo needs to sleep, not deal with you glowering at him,” He hears Derek say.

“I’m going to use his shower, not challenge him to a duel,” Liam responds, and there’s a sound like Liam trying to get past Derek to the door.

“Liam—” Derek starts, his voice starting to take on a hint of frustration, so Theo sighs, flips back his covers and scoots over to the edge of the bed, stands up on wobbly legs; he feels significantly better, but not one-hundred percent.

“Derek,” Theo says simply to the empty air, knows Derek will hear him, “It’s fine.”

There’s a pause out in the hallway, which Theo takes advantage of to shuffle his way over to the loft railing so he can look down, get a sightline of the front door. A few seconds later the door rolls open and Derek leans in, one hand extended out back into the hallway and planted on Liam’s chest. Liam isn’t looking at Derek, or at Theo; he glares mutely forward and doesn’t say a word.

“Good to see you awake,” Derek tells him honestly—Theo quirks him a tired smile; _thanks_ —and then Derek adds, “You sure?”

Theo drops his head onto his folded forearms on the railing and nods, repeats, “It’s fine. I’ll probably just pass out again the second he hits the shower anyway.”

Derek studies him for a minute and then shrugs, drops the hand he’d been using to restrain Liam and steps aside, “I’ll be in my apartment if you need anything.”

He clearly means _if you need a rescue_ ; Theo doubts it’ll come to that, but in his current condition, it’s true that Liam could probably take him. But no matter how angry Liam might be, Theo’s not worried about it; he raises one arm, elbow braced on the railing, and waves it dismissively. Liam doesn’t wait for any further agreement, just pushes past Derek and heads straight for the impractical staircase; Theo can hear him working his way upwards. He turns back to Derek and smiles tiredly at him again.

“Thanks,” He says quietly; he means for more than just the past five minutes, and from Derek’s solemn stare and quick nod, Derek knows it.

Liam finishes cresting the stairs just as Derek rolls Theo’s front door back shut. Theo turns to look at him but Liam just walks right past him towards the bathroom. His clothes are ripped and torn in places, stained with mud and dried blood; so apparently Derek’s chosen distraction was _fight club_ , probably out in one of the clearings in the Preserve. Theo winces; if Derek had felt that no-holds barred sparring—with “sparring” in pretty massive quotes—was necessary, then Liam must have been a few steps beyond _upset_.

“Liam—” Theo tries, but Liam ignores him, gets into the bathroom and slams the door shut behind him.

Theo sighs and lets his head drop back on a suddenly-boneless neck; _shit_. He knows he should stay standing for the inevitable confrontation that’s going to follow Liam getting out of the shower, but he can’t muster up the energy, so he shuffles back over to the bed and drops back onto it. He really does intend to stay upright, awake, but clearly the universe is set to keep its habit of the last twenty-four hours of not giving a particular shit about Theo’s wishes; he falls back asleep within minutes.

When he blinks back awake however long it is later, he sees Liam leaning against the loft railing across from him, arms crossed as he watches Theo. Liam is dressed in a pair of Theo’s sweatpants and one of his tanks, both of which are just slightly too big; the sight sends a bolt of heat through Theo that he ruthlessly smothers.

“Were you watching me sleep?” He asks, voice rasping, tilting his head some so that he can see Liam better.

Liam’s expression had been worryingly blank; at Theo’s words it twists some before Liam gets it back under control and he responds off-handedly, shrugging, “Fourteen hours ago I was watching you die, so.”

Theo swallows a sigh and brings his hands up to his face to scrub at it, then crunches himself upwards into a sitting position; he’s not going to want to be prone for this conversation. Liam watches him mutely, his pulse relatively steady but his scent spiking all over the place, though he’s clearly trying to control both. Theo blinks some, trying to soothe the tired, dry feeling in his eyes; god, is this what humans deal with _all the time_? When he finally looks back up at Liam, his jaw is working and his fingers are white-knuckled against his biceps.

Theo knows better than to speak, even though the silence is starting to itch underneath his skin. Eventually Liam looks away from him, his jaw clenching. When he looks back, his expression isn’t blank anymore, but it’s also unreadable; shifting too quickly through an array of emotions that Theo finds he can’t follow.

“Do you…” He finally starts, stops, starts again, “Do you really give so little a shit for your own life?”

Theo’s brow furrows and he looks up at Liam, “ _What?_ ”

But Liam just sneers, “Seriously? This is the second time you’ve kamikazed it during a confrontation with hunters. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“That’s not what happened,” Theo denies, feeling his own temper starting to rise, “The building was swarming with hunters—who were already trying to shoot Mason and Nolan, by the way—and I couldn’t see any other way out.”

Liam glares at him, “Alec said you could have made it to the truck in time to get out with them.”

“Alec is suffering from a guilt complex,” Theo counters, and ignores the guilt that spikes through his own system as he does; whatever Alec was feeling was pretty inarguably Theo’s fault, after all.

“Oh yeah?” Liam replies hotly, “Is Alec’s guilt complex bigger or smaller than your martyr complex?”

“Liam, c’mon, that’s not fair,” Theo protests.

“No, really,” Liam insists, his voice rising, “You’re going to have to explain this to me, because fourteen hours ago I had to watch you trying to breathe around your own liquifying esophagus after you practically gift-wrapped yourself for Monroe.”

“I didn’t want to die!” Theo shouts before he can help himself, “Jesus _christ_ , Liam!”

Theo can’t sit still anymore. He surges to his feet but deliberately stalks away from Liam; god knows if he got within arms’ reach right now, he might try to strangle him.

“Monroe shoved that _fucking_ capsule down my throat, and all I could think about was how much I was going to miss the pack,” He stops, glares at Liam, a part of him desperately trying to keep his next words from leaving his mouth, but he’s too pissed off, “How much I was going to miss _you_. That’s what I was thinking about when you all found me, you understand? How much I _didn’t_ want to die.”

He’s not sure if he meant his words as a barb, a verbal weapon to make Liam flinch back, realize the absurdity of his own accusations, but they come out more like a confession. Theo winces and turns away from Liam, drops his head back and covers his face with his hands; _fuck_. He’s trying to figure out how to salvage the situation when he hears movement behind him; he looks back over his shoulder just in time to see Liam, his arms now loose by his sides, his expression stricken. He doesn’t look angry anymore, he looks _gutted_.

“Look, I’m sorry, alright?” Theo tells him quietly, turning back to face him, “Not for saving Alec, Mason, and Nolan, I’d do that again in a heartbeat—” Liam goes to open his mouth so Theo talks louder, over him, “But I’m sorry that you had to...that I nearly…” He can’t get his mouth to form around the shape of the words, so he just finishes, some of his frustration leaking into his voice, “I’m sorry.”

Liam just keeps staring at him. Theo doesn’t know what to do, what else to say, and he’s about to pivot so that he can drop back down onto the bed, suddenly exhausted again, when Liam speaks.

“You son of a bitch,” He whispers hoarsely, and surges towards Theo.

Theo startles some but manages to catch him. Or catch him to an extent, anyway; they still slam into the back wall of Theo’s loft with enough force that Theo’s ears ring, briefly, but he does get his hands on Liam’s biceps. They just do him very little good when Liam uses his momentum to pin Theo to the wall, to crush his mouth over Theo’s.

Theo isn’t sure whether his mouth drops open because of the shock of hitting the wall or the shock of Liam kissing him; either way, Liam takes ruthless advantage to lick into his mouth. He moans, helplessly, and kisses back instinctually, slides his hands up and off of Liam’s biceps to wrap one around his shoulders, the other dropping to his waist to pull Liam more firmly against him. Liam takes advantage of that, too; he presses his hips hard against Theo’s, and the resulting spike of heat that jolts through Theo makes him drop his head back, breaking the kiss.

“Jesus,” He gasps, his head a whirling mess of arousal and confusion; if Liam is trying to punish him, it isn’t working.

“You don’t know what it was like,” Liam snarls against the skin of Theo’s throat, where he’s buried his face. He opens his mouth and bites at the muscle there, not gently; Theo jerks and hisses, his hips jerking against Liam’s, who just presses forward harder to pin Theo’s hips still with his own, “Coming into that warehouse, seeing you coughing up blood and barely conscious, Monroe standing over you. I thought you were _dead_. I thought we were going to have to _bury you_.”

“I—” Theo starts, but Liam doesn’t want to hear it, apparently; he surges back upwards and covers Theo’s mouth with his own.

Theo gives up on trying to talk, just opens his mouth against Liam’s and meets Liam’s tongue with his own. He slides the hand that he’d had around Liam’s shoulders up to cup the back of his head, tangling it in Liam’s ridiculous hair; Liam moves like he’s trying to simultaneously press back into Theo’s grip and press forward harder against his mouth. His hands are clenched in Theo’s shirt, twisting the fabric, and in the next second he uses his grips as leverage points, takes a half-step back and pivots so that he pulls Theo off the wall and off-balance enough that he can shove him back against the bed.

Theo’s knees catch the edge of the mattress and collapse. He’s still holding on to Liam, though, so they go down together, Liam putting his hands out at the last moment to brace himself over Theo. It breaks the kiss again but Liam doesn’t move immediately to restart it, just hovers over Theo on his hands and knees and stares down at him silently. Theo meets his eyes, feeling like a hot mess; his mouth feels raw and undoubtedly red and his chest is heaving. He hesitates, and then slowly brings his hands up so he can slide them back over the sides of Liam’s face, get them cupped around either side of his head. Slowly, slowly, waiting for Liam to pull away or otherwise deny him, he gently encourages Liam’s head downwards until he can press his lips against Liam’s; just a closed-mouth, gentle kiss.

Liam makes a hurt sound and surges against him again, just flattens himself out on top of Theo and gets his hands around Theo’s head so he can position his face, his mouth, as he wants it, his hips jerking in helpless, small movements against Theo’s. Theo moans again and opens his mouth, lets Liam turn the kiss hot and hard again, gets his feet planted flat on the mattress so that he can press his own hips up harder against Liam’s, too, grinding his achingly hard cock against Liam’s ass.

Liam breaks the kiss to gasp, pressing back hard against Theo. He pants against Theo’s jaw for a moment and then sits up, yanking at Theo’s shirt, “Off, off. Get this off.”

Theo sits up enough that, between the two of them, they can strip off his shirt. Liam shoves him back flat immediately once it’s gone, tossed away somewhere. Liam plants his hands flat on Theo’s pecs and then curls his fingers, digging furrows into Theo’s skin. His nails are blunt and the pressure isn’t hard enough to break skin, but Theo still gasps, his fingers spasming on Liam’s hips. Liam, who’d been watching Theo’s face avidly, grins fiercely and keeps going, rakes his hands down Theo’s heaving stomach, leaving ten red, quickly fading lines as he goes.

“Liam, Jesus,” Theo pants, dropping his head back and squeezing his eyes shut, the twist of arousal in his gut winding tighter.

He feels rather than sees it when Liam’s hands reach the thin sweatpants that Scott had found for him to wear home from the hospital, finds himself holding his breath as he feels Liam curl his fingers in the waistband. But then Liam stops and Theo blinks open his eyes, tilts his head forward so that he can meet Liam’s steady gaze. Apparently that’s what Liam wanted; he smiles slowly and—his eyes never leaving Theo’s, like he wants to see Theo’s reaction, _has_ to see Theo’s reaction—starts to peel them down.

Theo resists the urge to drop his head back down, close his eyes, somehow knowing that Liam will stop if he does. He makes a bitten-off sound and keeps his eyes on Liam, raises his hips so Liam can pull the sweatpants down and off; Liam quirks an eyebrow at Theo’s lack of underwear and Theo wants to respond, wants to say something biting, but he can’t, just clenches his jaw to keep another high-pitched sound from escaping. Liam laughs quietly at him like he knows exactly what he’s doing, but finishes pulling off the sweatpants and lets them fall to the floor before he gets a knee back on the bed next to Theo’s hips, slides upward. He drags one of his hands up Theo’s thigh as he goes, so that by the time he reaches Theo’s lips to kiss him again, his hand is close enough to Theo’s cock that he can wrap his hand tightly around him.

Theo gasps against Liam’s mouth and bucks, feels his cock slide smoothly through Liam’s grip as he does and can’t help but buck again. But that’s all Liam allows him; he brings his other knee up and pins Theo’s hipbone down. His other hand is up by Theo’s head, clenched in the sheets, and he’s got his own hip pinning Theo’s other hip down. It means Theo is pretty immobilized, unless he wants to start fighting Liam for a better position, and shocking himself, some, he finds he doesn’t; he sucks in a deep breath and then lets it out, forces himself to relax back as he does it.

He looks up to meet Liam’s gaze afterwards and Liam is watching him through heavy-lidded eyes. When he sees Theo looking at him—when he feels Theo relaxing under him—he gives a slow, satisfied smirk and starts to tighten his hand, starts to move it. Theo’s stomach clenches and his hips want to buck but he doesn’t let them, holds them still; his eyes want to close but he doesn’t let them either, keeps them firmly on Liam’s even as the pleasure in his gut starts to wind tighter and tighter, let’s Liam see it, see everything.

 _God, Liam, please_ , he thinks desperately, mouth falling open as his chest heaves, but just as he’s about to tip over the edge Liam stops. He doesn’t just still his hand, he lets him go completely, and Theo groans in protest, reaches up a hand before he knows what he’s doing to try and catch Liam’s retreating arm.

But Liam just catches his hand and forces it back down, shakes his head when Theo looks at him, brow furrowed and brain feeling too scrambled to try and do anything but stare at him stupidly.

“I want you to fuck me,” He explains simply, bluntly, like he’s describing the goddamn weather. Theo can’t even moan he’s so simultaneously gut-punched by surprise and arousal; he just stares at Liam wordlessly.

Liam likes that response, apparently; he gives him that same slow, satisfied smirk and kisses him again thoroughly. Now that Liam isn’t working him, some of Theo’s brain power is coming back online and the first thing he thinks is _Jesus Christ_ —Liam is going to be the death of him—and the second thing he thinks is that whether Liam wants Theo to fuck him or not—Liam wants Theo to fuck him, _Jesus Christ_ —Liam is overdressed. Still kissing him, Theo winds his fingers in Liam’s shirt—Theo’s shirt, actually, and his hips buck before he can stop them—and he starts tugging it upwards. Liam pulls back and frowns at him like Theo is misbehaving, but Liam made a critical error in giving Theo the time and space to get his head back in the game; he releases his hold on the shirt but slips his hands underneath, slides them upwards until he can dig his fingers into the muscles of Liam’s back, Liam’s mouth dropping open on a gasp.

“Unless you’re expecting me to fuck you through your clothes, you’re going to need to take these off,” Theo points out, his voice low and heated.

He’s not sure if it’s the words or the tone, but Liam groans and his hips jerk against Theo’s. Theo can feel Liam’s hard cock through his sweatpants and he can’t help himself; he slides his hands down from Liam’s back and underneath his sweatpants until he can palm his ass, encourage Liam to ride his hip. Liam cries out and collapses down to bury his face in Theo’s shoulder, his hips working, Theo’s hands helping him move.

“Okay, okay,” He pants after a long minute, his hips trying to slow in Theo’s grip, but Theo just grins savagely and jerks his own hip up against Liam’s cock, Liam bucking in response again before he can help himself.

Theo noses at his jaw, keeps up the steady motion of his hips as he murmurs directly into Liam’s ear, “C’mon, Liam. Let me feel it.” He gets Liam’s earlobe between his teeth, bites down, “I want to feel it.”

Liam cries out again and buries his face harder against Theo’s shoulder, Theo releasing his earlobe but turning his head so that he can press his forehead hard against Liam’s temple as Liam starts to move again. He tightens his grip on Liam’s ass, gets his foot flat so that he can push back harder as Liam rides the crease of Theo’s hip, his movements becoming jerkier and jerkier as he gets closer.

“That’s it,” Theo tells him, “That’s it, Liam. C’mon.”

Liam stiffens with a wordless cry and Theo feels Liam’s cock jerk against his hip, the slow spread of wetness as Liam’s hips start to slow, still bucking erratically as aftershocks hit him. Theo gentles his grip on Liam’s ass, starts nosing at the side of his face again, murmuring mindless praise as Liam slowly comes down. Eventually Liam groans and tips to the side, off of Theo and onto his back. He brings up his arms to cover his face, his chest heaving. Theo rolls over onto his elbow so that he can watch him, the sight him so undone—the _smell_ of him so undone—like a gut-punch. Theo reaches his free hand forward until he can slide it underneath Liam’s sweats, feel his fever-hot skin, wet with his own release. Liam shivers but doesn’t stop him, moans a weak protest when Theo runs featherlight fingers over his spent cock.

“Jesus, Liam,” Theo whispers, takes his hand back out so that he can grip Liam’s hip instead, bury his face in Liam’s neck.

Liam wraps his arms around him immediately, nosing at Theo’s jaw until Theo turns his head and Liam can kiss him. They stay like that for several minutes, until finally Theo pulls back, shifts so that he can prop his head up on the hand he’d been bracing himself with. Liam looks up at him and grins, a little wobbly in his post-orgasm haze. He reaches forward with one hand until he hits Theo’s thigh, runs it upwards until he reaches Theo’s cock, still hard.

“You made me a deal,” Liam tells him, taking him in hand in a loose grip.

Theo sucks in a sharp breath but manages to keep his head, reaches down to still Liam’s hand, “First off, _if_ we made a deal, you still wouldn’t have fulfilled your end since you’re still dressed—” Liam makes a face and mutters _whose fault is that_ , which Theo graciously ignores, “—but even setting that aside, we don’t have lube.”

The lack of appropriate supplies doesn’t really bother Theo; seeing Liam come undone, _feeling_ Liam come undone, was really almost enough for him. Maybe Liam will let Theo get himself off on the crease of Liam’s hip, just like Theo just did with Liam, once he finally gets out of his—Theo’s, _Jesus—_ sweatpants. But Liam just gives him a strange look, which Theo returns, because, seriously, what?

“There’s lube in your nightstand,” Liam finally says.

“...what?” Theo replies blankly.

Liam keeps looking at him strangely for a few seconds, and then it must slowly dawn on him that Theo really doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about because his expression scrunches up and he starts laughing. He lets go of Theo—Theo swallowing back a disappointed moan at the loss—and reaches up to cover his face with his hands, now practically giggling to himself. Then he scrambles upward—Theo leaning back out of the way to avoid a truly unfortunate accident—until he can reach Theo’s nightstand, open the drawer and start digging around in it. Theo can’t really focus on it; Liam’s sweatpants have slipped pretty far down his ass and Theo’s a little distracted. Eventually, though, Liam emerges from the nightstand drawer victorious; he turns and tosses a little bottle of lube on to the sheets.

“You really didn’t know?” He asks, starting to laugh again, probably at the absolutely bewildered look on Theo’s face.

“No!” Theo answers, “How in the hell did _you_?”

Liam shrugs easily, leaning back against Theo’s pillows. He looks positively _obscene_ , his skin sheened with sweat, hair in disarray, his knees bent and dropped open to perfectly frame the wet patch on the front of his sweatpants. Theo swallows, feels his own cock jerk, Liam’s eyes dropping to it. But after a second he remembers to answer Theo’s question.

“Found it a few weeks ago looking for something, I don’t remember what,” Then he grins a molasses-slow grin at Theo, gets one of his bare feet on Theo’s thigh and flexes it, “So, was the lack of lube your only excuse, or did you have a few more that you wanted to try out?”

Theo narrows his eyes at him, catches Liam’s wayward foot in one hand and then gets ahold of Liam’s other foot, yanks him down the bed until Theo can cover him with his body, just lower himself on top of Liam.

“You can be a little shit sometimes, you know that?” Theo tells him conversationally; it’s ruined somewhat by the way he can’t stop his hips from moving against Liam’s in helpless little jerks.

Liam beams up at him, endlessly amused as he always is by his own antics, “It’s one of the reasons you love me.”

“Maybe,” Theo allows, ignoring the way his pulse spikes at Liam’s words.

He doesn’t give Liam a chance to respond, just gets his hands underneath Liam’s shoulder blades so he can sit him up, strip the tank off of him. Liam shivers as the fabric drags over his skin and bites off a sound when his bare back hits the sheets; Theo leans down to lick at Liam’s abused lip, his hands sliding down Liam’s sides until he can get his fingers wrapped around the waistband of Liam’s sweatpants.

Then Theo leans back some to give Liam an unimpressed look, tapping at the waist of the sweatpants—which have _nothing underneath them_ —pointedly, “I’m sorry, weren’t you giving me shit earlier for this exact thing?”

Liam just rolls his eyes, “You’re in your own house, I’m just a guest here.”

“Right,” Theo snorts, “Because you’re always so respectful of other people’s property rights in general, and mine in particular.”

Liam just grins and rears up to catch Theo’s mouth again, gets Theo to chase his mouth as he lays back down so that Theo is once more covering him. Back flat, Theo raises up some on his knees to give Liam room to lift his own hips, Theo stripping the sweats down and off of him. It takes a bit of maneuvering since Theo doesn’t want to leave Liam’s mouth—and Liam probably wouldn’t let him if he tried—but eventually he gets them off and tossed...somewhere.

Theo deepens the kiss further as he gets his hands underneath Liam’s knees, gets him to crook them on either side of Theo’s hips. He waits until Liam groans and seems to lose himself in the kiss, and then he reaches out a hand, searching the sheets until he finds the bottle of lube that Liam had retrieved. With his thumb, he flicks it open; Liam must catch the small _snick_ it makes because he makes a small sound, his hips jerking against Theo’s, his head turning to try to look. Theo doesn’t let him, follows his mouth, manipulating the bottle in his hand as he does so until he can squeeze some into his palm one-handed. Then he drops the bottle and rubs his fingers through the lube to get them wet.

Theo’s attempts to keep him distracted or not, Liam drops his legs open wider, his hands clenching on Theo’s back. Theo shifts some to give himself room, brings his lube-wet hand to Liam’s entrance and rubs over it; Liam makes a choked sound and his spent cock twitches against Theo’s stomach. Grinning, Theo noses at Liam’s cheek, keeps rubbing one finger over Liam’s entrance.

Then, just as he goes to push the first one inside, he bites Liam’s jaw and murmurs, “You’re going to be like a rabbit, I can already tell.”

The distraction works, to a certain extent; Liam snorts out a laugh and Theo’s finger slides in smoothly, though Theo can still feel Liam’s thigh muscles twitching against his hand, his hip. He bites again at Liam’s jaw as he starts to work his finger in and out, noses it upward so that he can lick over Liam’s throat, pull a fold of skin beneath his teeth and worry at it. After a long minute of the simultaneous stimulation Liam’s thighs start to relax and he turns his head towards Theo’s, obviously looking for a kiss. Theo indulges him and keeps working him with just the one finger, waiting.

“Okay,” Liam finally gasps a minute or so later.

Theo pulls his finger out, rubs it and the others back through the lube still on his palm, then repositions his hand at Liam’s entrance. Slowly, he starts to press two inside, Liam’s stomach muscles fluttering; Theo turns his head so that he can rub his mouth over Liam’s shoulder, pulls his lips back so that he can press the tips of his blunt human teeth around Liam’s collarbone. Liam gasps and jerks, and Theo fully seats his fingers as he does.

Liam’s making a sound that definitely classifies as a whine—though Theo has no intention of ever telling him that—his fingernails scoring marks across Theo’s shoulders. There’s just a hint—a _hint_ —of claws to his grip, Liam struggling to keep control, and Theo can’t help it; he buries his face against Liam’s neck and moans, his own hips helplessly jerking. But he keeps working Liam with two fingers, Liam steadily adjusting to the intrusion.

“You’re going to be insufferably careful, I can already tell,” He finally pants, and it takes Theo a minute to realize that he’s trying to respond mockingly to Theo’s _rabbit_ characterization earlier.

Theo just smirks and brushes his lips over Liam’s brow, murmuring, “Not an insult.”

But he also takes the comment in the spirit that it was meant and pulls out his fingers, repeats the process of getting them and a third finger wet with the remaining lube on his palm before he returns his hand to Liam’s entrance. Liam is practically vibrating as he does, his cock already starting to harden again against Theo’s stomach. Theo raises up some on his braced elbow so that he can meet Liam’s eyes, study his expression; Liam’s chest is heaving, and when he notices Theo’s attention he makes a face.

“What are you waiting for?” He demands, knocking Theo’s bent elbow with his knee.

Theo just grins at him, replies, “That.”

And then he starts slowly pressing in with three fingers. Liam sucks in a breath, his back arching, but when he feels Theo’s arm flexing like he’s maybe thinking of withdrawing, Liam reaches down and grabs Theo’s wrist, holds it in place. He glowers at Theo, and Theo, fighting back a smile that would, in all likelihood, only serve to infuriate Liam more, gives in, keeps pressing forward. Liam bites off a sound and tips his head back, but doesn’t let go of Theo’s wrist. He gentles the grip some, though, like now that he’s assured himself that Theo isn’t going to stop he just wants to feel it as Theo moves, as Theo works him open. Theo studies his pleasure-slack face and has to bite his own lip, forcibly still his own hips; _soon_ , he promises himself.

He works Liam thoroughly with three fingers, paying attention not only to the steadily-fading twitches in his thighs but also the way that Liam bites at his bottom lip, the way he jerks every now and then as Theo changes the angle. Theo keeps going, and has to pull his head quickly to the side when he hits the spot he was looking for and Liam all but jackknifes upward with a gasp.

“Jesus,” He moans, falling back flat, his back arching.

Theo keeps at that spot for a half-minute, until Liam whines—straight up, no ambiguity this time—and knocks his arm with his knee again.

“I said—said I wanted you to _fuck me_ ,” He’s trying to sound normal and completely in control of the situation, but between his desperately jerking hips and the way that he’s about to rip Theo’s sheets between his clenched fists, it’s not working, “You know what—what I meant.”

Theo grins at him and skates his nose up Liam’s cheek, then sits up, withdrawing his fingers carefully. Liam’s eyes pop open and he gets a look on his face like he’s about to protest, but at Theo’s pointed look he desists, his expression going mulish.

“You’re enjoying this,” He accuses, loosening his grip on the sheets to reach forward and scratch his nails down Theo’s lower stomach, following the trail of hair there down to Theo’s cock.

Theo inhales sharply and pulls away, making a face down at Liam, “Isn’t that the point?”

But Liam’s crafty; he’d used the distraction to retrieve the bottle of lube, and as Theo watches he gets a glob of it in one palm, then reaches forward and takes Theo’s cock in hand. Theo gasps and falls forward onto his hands and knees over Liam, his mouth falling open as he pants, as Liam works him steadily. Liam grins up at him like he’s gotten some of his own back, and Theo grits his teeth, forces himself to reach for Liam’s hand and still it, ignoring Liam’s protest.

“Hey, I’m just following orders, here,” He tells Liam, notes with interest when Liam’s pupils dilate at his words.

But he lets go of Theo. He lets go and resettles himself pointedly on the bed, his legs dropping open wide around Theo’s hips. Theo bites off a helpless sound at the sight and closes his eyes, takes a few deep breaths, reaching for control. A few breaths later and he opens them again, reaches forward and skates his fingers lightly down Liam’s sides until he gets to his hips, then curls his fingers around Liam’s hip bones, tilts them upward. Liam bites his lip and watches as Theo takes one hand off of his hips to take himself in hand, positioning himself at Liam’s entrance.

He keeps his eyes locked on Liam as he starts to push in, as he feels Liam stretch around him. Liam whines but doesn’t close his eyes, doesn’t tip his head back; sensing, maybe, that Theo wants to his face, his expression. It’s a struggle for Theo, too; his eyes desperately want to close as he sinks into Liam, the heat and feeling of him incredible. By the time he’s fully seated he’s panting, braced over Liam with both hands planted and twisted in the sheets by Liam’s head. Liam stares up at him through heavy-lidded eyes, his own mouth open and his chest heaving. As Theo watches him, forcefully keeping his hips still, Liam very deliberately brings his legs up to wrap around Theo’s hips, his hands coming up to slide up and over Theo’s shoulders until he can dig his fingers just under Theo’s shoulder blades, and this time there’s a very careful, and very _deliberate_ , prick of claws.

“C’mon,” Liam orders Theo quietly, forcefully.

Theo groans and buries his face in Liam’s neck, drops his body down onto Liam’s so that he can move his hands to wrap them around Liam’s hips, hold him steady as Theo starts to move. Liam cries out as he does, his hands spasming on Theo’s shoulders, and Theo feels the tips of Liam’s claws pierce his skin, ten points of quick, brief pain in counterpoint to the pleasure overtaking him. In the next instant Liam’s nails are blunt again but he rakes them down Theo’s back regardless, and then he brings them up above his head, bracing himself as Theo continues to move over him, in him.

“Liam,” Theo gasps helplessly, turning his head so that his face is right over Liam’s collarbone; he can’t help it, he leans forward until he can close his teeth around the bone, Liam inhaling sharply as he does it.

He takes one hand off the wall above his head and clamps it over the back of Theo’s neck, so Theo keeps his teeth where they are, worries at the skin but doesn’t break it. Liam raises his hips to meet his thrusts, the two of them falling into a rhythm as the pleasure winds tighter and tighter in Theo’s gut, as Liam’s cock rises fully hard against his stomach.

And then Liam uses the hand on Theo’s neck to force his head upwards. Theo looks at him and Liam’s eyes glint, and then in the next second, he’s dropped his legs from around Theo’s hips and shifted just enough that Theo slips out of him. Theo hisses at the sudden loss, brow furrowing, but he doesn’t have long to wonder; Liam executes an acrobatic move and gets them flipped, Theo landing hard on his back with Liam now straddling his hips.

Liam plants his hands on Theo’s chest and smiles that slow predator smile down at him and then deliberately reaches back, takes Theo in hand as he raises up on his knees and gets Theo positioned back at his entrance. Theo presses his head back hard into the mattress but doesn’t look away, entranced by the sight as Liam slowly lowers himself back onto Theo’s cock, his eyes falling closed and his head falling back as he moans.

He takes a few panting breaths and then drops his head back forward, plants his hands once more on Theo’s chest and starts to move, raising and lowering himself on Theo, his eyes fixed firmly on Theo’s. Groaning, Theo gets his feet planted flat and starts to push up into Liam when he lowers himself, gets his hands on Liam’s hips to help him raise himself.

It doesn’t take long for the pleasure in Theo’s gut—briefly interrupted by Liam’s sudden position-switch—to roar back with a vengeance. As he feels the first stirrings of his orgasm in his gut he reaches out the hand he’s used to open Liam up, still slick with the last remnants of the lube he’d used, and wraps it around Liam, starts to work him in time with his and Liam’s hips. Liam shudders and cries out, his head dropping loosely forward, and in just a few more thrusts, he spills with a sharp cry over Theo’s hand and Theo’s stomach.

The sound of it rockets through Theo and he gives a few more quick thrusts, and that’s all it takes; he stiffens and arches into Liam, feels himself spilling. As the last of the overwhelming wave starts to fade, he relaxes back down, panting, still tucked inside Liam. Liam doesn’t move yet, either, just flexes his hands spasmodically on Theo’s shoulders, his thighs twitching against Theo’s hips.

Eventually Liam shifts just enough that Theo’s spent cock slips out of him, Theo jerking helplessly, oversensitized. He expects Liam to lay down, then, but Liam doesn’t, just stays over Theo’s hips. Theo opens his eyes to study him and feels his brow furrow at the solemn expression on Liam’s face, Liam’s eyes focused with laser-intensity on the smooth skin of Theo’s left shoulder. He’s about to ask when Liam raises one hand and places his fingers gently over Theo’s mouth, shaking his head.

Theo nods, slightly, trying to communicate he understands, though he really doesn’t. But Liam doesn’t keep him waiting long; he looks at Theo, then peels back his lips from his teeth so that there’s no way that Theo can miss his fangs lengthening. When Theo glances up at his eyes to try and catch some clue as to what Liam’s doing, thinking, his eyes are flared golden. Theo feels his breath hitch and his pulse spike, unsure of Liam’s intentions, but Liam just leans down slowly, slowly, his golden eyes on Theo’s, until finally the angle makes him drop them. It means that Theo is staring at the top of Liam’s head when he feels Liam’s fangs open against his shoulder, just over the meat of his pec underneath his collarbone. Liam waits, and as the seconds tick by Theo realizes he’s waiting for _permission_.

“I—” He starts, but he has no idea what Liam’s planning. In the end he just closes his eyes, drops his head back flat, breath coming out harshly through his nose, and he says through gritted teeth, “ _Yes_.”

In the next instant he feels Liam’s fangs pierce his shoulder and Theo sucks in a huge breath, his whole body jerking. Liam’s meticulous about it, using just enough force to create a bite but no more, and when he withdraws, he very carefully opens his mouth wide so that he’s not tearing any skin or flesh. Theo stares at him as he sits up, Theo’s blood streaking his mouth like war paint, his bite already healing, already healed.

“Liam, what—” He begins to ask, but then he freezes; as he’d talked, Liam had reached down with his right hand, claws extended, and placed them directly over Theo’s abdomen, the tips pricking at Theo’s skin.

Theo stares up at Liam, his chest heaving, completely out to sea. But then Liam leans down again, eyes still flared and mouth still fanged, and opens his mouth gently, so gently, over Theo’s throat, and the truth hits Theo like a freight train. The shoulder Liam had bitten was the one that Preston had shot, the one that had blackened and festered and nearly killed Theo when he was trying to save Nolan. And the claws poised over his stomach, the fangs over his throat; those are the two places that ended up pierced with dozens of tiny slivers of mistletoe after Monroe made him swallow her poisoned capsule.

“Jesus, Liam,” He gasps, and feels his heaving stomach press harder against Liam’s claws, feels the skin of his throat pull under Liam’s fangs as he talks.

His whole body is a confused mess of arousal and something else, something heavy, darker, and just a hint of fear; he has a werewolf’s claws poised over his gut and a werewolf’s fangs closed over his throat, after all. His hands, still wrapped around Liam’s hips, clench, _hard_ , as he feels Liam’s claws and fangs against his body, poised. Waiting.

Then Theo closes his eyes and deliberately relaxes his body, drops his head back further to bare his neck.

“Do it.” He tells Liam firmly, then, suddenly desperate, “Liam, _please_.”

Liam does. He presses his claws carefully but relentlessly down until they pierce skin, muscle. At the same time, he closes his fangs over Theo’s throat, and Theo can almost immediately feel thin trails of blood trickle down his neck, has to resist his instinctive response to fight, holds himself still, so still, as Liam withdraws both his claws and fangs and sits back up.

He doesn’t know what to say. He feels completely broken open, completely gutted, Liam staring down at him with Theo’s blood in his mouth and Theo’s blood on his hands. Liam just sits and waits as Theo pants underneath him, waits until Theo’s breathing starts to slow and his hands on Liam’s hips start to relax. Then he reaches forward with the hand that he’d used to pierce Theo’s stomach and scrapes his fingers lightly over Theo’s lips, then down over his bloody neck.

“You have to understand something,” Liam finally says, his eyes flicking up to Theo’s from where they’d been following his hand’s progress on Theo’s neck, “Theo. You have to understand something.”

Theo goes to speak, realizes his throat is too tight, and just nods. Liam studies him and Theo wonders what he’ll do if Liam doesn’t believe him, doesn’t think that Theo’s listening; he has to hear what Liam has to say, _needs_ to hear it.

But Liam must see something to satisfy him, because he continues, voice low, “You know you’re part of the pack now, you can’t act anymore like you don’t know that.”

So Scott had told Liam about Scott’s and Theo’s conversation at the hospital, Scott saying, _there’s a long line of people that are going to kill me_ ; Ms. McCall saying, _so you finally cleared that up, did you_? But Liam doesn’t give him time to dwell on it, rubs his thumb over the ridge of Theo’s adam’s apple steadily.

“So you have to know,” His thumb pauses in its sweeps to press down, but just lightly, “You have to know that you don’t just belong to yourself anymore.” He narrows his eyes when Theo jerks at his words, presses down harder with his thumb, “You’re part of the pack, you belong to the pack now, too.”

Theo’s chest feels too tight, heaving under Liam’s splayed-out other hand, but Liam isn’t done.

“You belong to the pack, so you have to take care of yourself like you’d take care of the pack,” Liam tells him, his hand slipping down Theo’s neck to rest at its base, pressing just lightly at Theo’s throat, “You have to protect yourself like you’d protect the pack.”

Liam’s hand on Theo’s throat clenches, just briefly, just a bit, and Theo can’t help the small sound that escapes him. But he doesn’t look away from Liam, keeps his eyes firmly fixed on Liam’s. The wounds that Preston and Monroe inflicted are long gone, and the wounds that Liam replaced them with are gone, too, but Theo stills feels their phantoms, burning like brands everywhere that Liam had claimed him, had _re_ claimed him. He thinks of Liam saying, _you’re part of the pack now_ , and, _you have to protect yourself like you’d protect the pack_.

“Okay,” He tells Liam—and tells himself—reaching up with one hand to touch trembling fingers to Liam’s red-streaked lips, Theo’s blood in his mouth, “Okay.”

\---

Theo wakes up sometime later with his nose buried in the back of Liam’s neck, his bare chest pressed up tight against Liam’s equally naked back, his arm draped over Liam’s waist. He blinks a bit and then huffs to blow some of Liam’s ridiculous hair out of his mouth, trying to figure out what woke him.

Voices.

 _Voices_ woke him, right outside of his door. And they’re voices he recognizes, too, a whole cacophony of them; Scott and Malia, Stiles and Derek and Lydia, Nolan and Mason and Alec and Corey. The whole McCall pack—or it’s younger members, anyway, Theo thinks, certain that somehow, somewhere, Argent was just irritated and didn’t even know why—is stood outside of Theo’s front door and very clearly about to enter his apartment.

 _Shit_ , he thinks, eyes widening. There’s no way that the apartment doesn’t reek of sex, and very possibly of blood, and there’s absolutely nothing that Theo can do about either of those things in the seconds before the door rolls open. Also, he and Liam are both _naked_ , but as long as no one comes bounding up the staircase—not entirely unlikely—that’s a more immediately surmountable problem.

He’s proven right about the smell seconds later when Scott suddenly says, “Oh, jeez...Stiles, wait!”

But it’s too late; Theo can hear the door rolling open, even as the conversation falls silent, everyone curious about Scott’s warning.

“Wait? Why?” Stiles asks, though the point has already been mooted.

Then there’s a few seconds of loaded silence and Theo wonders what Scott’s face is doing—wonders what Derek’s, Malia’s, Alec’s, and Corey’s are doing, too—and feels Liam finally start to stir beside him. Their expressions must be revealing in some way because Stiles suddenly whoops.

“You mean…? Did they…? Oh my god, did they finally screw each other’s brains out?” Then he raises his voice, presumably for the benefit of Theo and Liam, who could hear him perfectly well at his previous volume, “Do you two assholes know how long we’ve all been suffocating in your haze of unresolved sexual tension?!”

So Stiles had put the lube in Theo’s nightstand; at least that was one mystery solved.

Liam turns to look over his shoulder at Theo, his expression a mixture of horror and unwilling amusement, and Theo can’t help it; his face scrunches up and he starts to laugh, helplessly. Liam follows suit seconds later, rolling over so that he can bury his face in Theo’s shoulder, his laughter quickly turning to snorts as the true absurdity of the situation takes him over. Theo tilts his head so he can bury his face in Liam’s hair and laughs with him.

Downstairs, there’s a flurry of hissed whispers—Theo catches Scott responding to Stiles’ earlier question by saying, _I don’t know, probably as long as we all had to suffer through yours and Derek’s_ , followed by Malia adding, _not to mention yours and Lydia’s_ —while Mason, Corey, and Nolan all break out into helpless giggles and Alec shakes with silent laughter; Theo is familiar with it, because Alec has spent a lot of time since coming to Beacon Hills trying not to laugh at _Theo_. Which, in hindsight, he thinks, glancing down at Liam’s bent head, was maybe entirely deserved.

“Okay, look,” Theo finally announces, loudly enough that the humans can hear him, too, “If you assholes would just exercise some goddamn manners for a moment and _stay downstairs_ , we will come meet you.”

Stiles’ only response is to wolf-whistle, but from the sound immediately afterwards, Derek smacks him upside the back of the head.

“Sure, Theo,” Scott says, sounding an unfortunate mixture of contrite and gleefully amused, “We’re going to start cleaning up, okay?”

Theo assents and waits until he hears the sound of the door rolling shut, the stomp of feet as the pack troops in, stepping gingerly around the broken glass and strewn _tchotchkes_ covering Theo’s floor. Someone opens the closet with all the cleaning supplies, and Lydia—bless her—starts planning the most efficient cleanup, and all in all it means that Theo feels comfortable enough that he and Liam aren’t going to be ambushed by dickish pack members to flop his head back and then tilt it to smirk softly at Liam. Liam grins back at him, his arms folded underneath his head, and then he leans forward and kisses Theo.

He probably means it to be brief but Theo catches his head, holds him there so that he can deepen it, lick into Liam’s mouth. The sound of the pack downstairs falls away and Theo starts to lose himself in it, Liam shifting some to more fully cover Theo’s body, when something _clangs_ hard against the loft railing and they both jump, breaking apart.

“ _No_ ,” Theo hears Malia say forcefully, “ _Absolutely not_.”

He and Liam both freeze, and then both immediately crack up with laughter again. Downstairs, he can hear the commentary start up as the pack draws the obvious conclusion, and eventually Liam turns his head and yells _god, fine, rain on my parade_ , then turns to grin at Theo.

They get up after that, pad into the bathroom. If the sex was all they had to worry about, Theo would feel perfectly comfortably just pulling on clothes and going downstairs to torture the other supernatural-sensed pack members in retaliation for their once again breaking into his apartment, but his shoulder, stomach, and neck are all covered in streaks of dried blood, and while Theo had done his best to lick it all out of Liam’s mouth, there are still hints of Theo’s blood in the corners of Liam’s lips. Theo hops into the shower first, planting a restraining hand on Liam’s chest when he tries to join him.

“Malia will actually kill us,” He says regretfully.

“Fine,” Liam huffs, but then he runs his gaze down Theo’s body and smirks, molasses-slow, “But you’re going to make it up to me later.”

Oh, Theo could do that. As it is, he risks Malia’s wrath to tug Liam in for a quick and dirty kiss, then pushes him back—ignoring Liam’s indignant protest—and finishes getting in the shower. He’s in and out within five minutes, leaves the water running so that Liam can head in directly after him; Liam retaliates for earlier by pushing Theo up against the sink and kissing him thoroughly, Theo’s cock starting to harden and twitch against Liam’s stomach, before he pushes away with a grin and darts into the shower. Theo groans and covers his face with his hands, willing his erection away, and then goes to get dressed, find something— _including underwear_ —for Liam to wear.

When they descend the World’s Most Impractical Staircase ten minutes later, it’s to raucous applause and cheering. Theo just rolls his eyes, but Liam raises both middle fingers, though his uncontrollable smirk ruins it a bit. After they hit the main floor he jogs forward a few steps to catch Corey in a headlock, Corey having been one of the most obnoxious clappers. Corey laughingly protests and Mason comes to his “rescue,” jumping on Liam’s back. They all go down in a tumble, Nolan and Alec dodging back out of the way, Alec catching Nolan’s waist as he stumbles, Nolan tossing him a warm and completely besotted smile.

Theo leaves Liam to his fate and heads to the kitchen, where Derek is depositing a dustpan of broken glass into the trash. Derek looks up at him as Theo comes in and makes for the cabinet with the glasses, and even he can’t hide his amusement.

“Yuck it up,” Theo mutters, “We still beat you and Stiles by a good year.”

Derek barks out a laugh and just claps him on the shoulder as he heads back out to the living room, broom in hand. Theo gets his glass of water and drinks it, listening to the sound of the pack outside in the main room. He closes his eyes for a moment, savoring it; back in Monroe’s warehouse, choking on his own _liquifying esophagus_ , Theo had been sure he’d never have the opportunity to do so again.

When he opens his eyes and turns to head back to the living room, Alec is standing in the doorway, one hand on the jamb. Theo stops and stares at him, Alec’s scent hot and his pulse racing.

“Alec,” Theo starts, completely unsure what he’s going to say, but Alec moots it.

He surges forward and Theo catches him, wraps his arms around Alec just as tight as Alec wraps his arms around Theo. Alec isn’t crying—Theo can’t smell tears—but he’s shaking, his head buried in Theo’s chest.

“I’m never going to forgive you for making me leave you there,” He swears, even as his scent and pulse give lie to his words.

“I know, Alec,” Theo murmurs, tightening his grip and pressing his temple against the top of Alec’s head, “I know, I’m sorry.”

They stay like that for a few long minutes, and then eventually Alec’s shaking subsides and he pulls back from Theo. His eyes are red but dry, and Theo can’t help himself; he reaches forward and clasps his hand around the back of Alec’s neck, pulls him in so they’re forehead to forehead, just like they were before Theo’s capture, before Theo made Alec leave him to Monroe’s nonexistent mercies.

“Think of it this way,” He tells Alec, his voice attempting to be light but mostly failing, “Now that Scott’s taken away my ability to pretend like I don’t know I’m part of this pack, you can make me spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”

Alec laughs brokenly, “Oh, I promise you. I will.”

Theo pulls back from him but keeps his hand on his neck, looks at him for a few long seconds, then just says, softly, “Good.”

Theo waits in the kitchen for a few minutes with Alec while Alec waits for his healing to erase the evidence of his red eyes, for his pulse to calm and his scent to return to baseline. Taking a chance—and genuinely happy for him—Theo makes an offhand comment about Nolan, breaks out into a wide grin when Alec just colors and ducks his head, smiling happily. Theo pulls him back in for another hug, but this one is congratulatory, warm, contented. Alec laughs and hugs him back, then lets him go, says, _I guess I better get back out there to him, huh?_

“Guess so,” Theo agrees, and laughs quietly as Alec grins and goes.

But Nolan appears in the doorway after Alec leaves, Mason hovering just over his shoulder. Theo’s expression sombers and he bites his lip, meets their twisted expressions.

“God, come here,” He finally orders, and they both rush him.

He catches them both, one arm around each of their shoulders. He cups the back of both of their heads with his hands, presses his forehead first against Mason’s bent head and then Nolan’s. They’re squeezing him hard enough, one on each side, that he’s actually having some trouble breathing, but Theo doesn’t care; he really, really doesn’t care.

“We begged Alec the whole way to Yreka to turn back,” Nolan tells him face buried in Theo’s shoulder and his voice thick, “But he just kept saying that if we did, we’d just get captured and then you would have died for nothing.”

Theo tightens his arms around them both, his eyes starting to burn. He drops the hand he’d had on the back of Nolan’s head to his neck, feels the thin, raised scar there. They stay like that for a good few minutes, and then Mason pulls back some, his cheeks wet.

His grin is a little broken, but there’s genuine amusement in his voice when he says, “Shohreh is really pissed at you, by the way. When we told her what had happened she said that was a stupid way to die and went off to start yelling at all of her betas to get ready to go to Beacon Hills. After Scott called to say that they had you, that you were going to be okay, she, uh…”

He trails off, looking a little embarrassed, but Theo just smirks, “No, please. What’d she say?”

Mason grins, and even Nolan, who pulls back from Theo some, but only enough so that he can see Mason’s and Theo’s faces, is smiling.

“She said you have to come see her now so that she can give you remedial lessons in how to not be, um. ‘A fucking strategic catastrophe,’” Mason finishes, coloring some as he repeats Shohreh’s words.

“Great,” Theo mutters, but as he says it he realizes he means it sincerely, and he’s pretty sure it shows in his voice.

Mason laughs and steps back into Theo’s grip, and Theo tightens his arm back around him, does the same to Nolan when Nolan does the same. And then Stiles, being Stiles, interrupts the moment.

“Hey, you three can’t avoid cleanup duty by having touching reunions in the kitchen all night!” He yells; almost immediately afterward, there’s the sound of Lydia sighing and a small _twack_ as someone—Derek? Scott?—smacks him in the arm.

Theo rolls his eyes but lets go of Mason and Nolan, smiles at them softly when they step away. Mason scrubs at his wet cheeks to get rid of the tear tracks, while Nolan presses the heels of his palms briefly against his eyes and then drops them. They grin at Theo one last time and then turn to head back out into the living room, Mason pausing briefly in the doorway to kiss Corey, who’d come in at some point to lean against the brick. He watches Mason and Nolan as they rejoin the others in the living room, and then he turns back to Theo. At Theo’s raised eyebrow, he grins.

“I heard there were touching reunions happening in here,” He says breezily, but underneath his scent spikes, just briefly.

Theo laughs wetly and reaches out a hand, uses it to pull Corey in when Corey takes it. Corey’s hug isn’t as desperate as Alec’s or Mason’s or Nolan’s—there’s a part of Corey, and likely always will be a part, that can’t help but see Josh and Tracey every time he looks at Theo—but it’s tight, and it’s relieved.

After a minute or so Corey pulls back, quirks a smile. He searches Theo’s eyes for a moment, his jaw working, and then he pulls his lower lip into his mouth, bites it and releases it, then seems to make up his mind about whatever he’d been wrestling with.

“You were a seriously shitty alpha,” Corey tells him bluntly, and Theo winces even as he can’t help but snort of a laugh—talk about a _massive understatement_ —but Corey’s not done. His lips are twitching like he’s fighting his own smile at Theo’s reaction, and then he adds, softly, truthfully, “But I honestly don’t know what we’d do without you now.”

Theo’s chest clenches and he smiles, a little brokenly, replies, “I’m going to do my best from now on to make sure you don’t have to find out.”

“Good,” Corey says, then, grin going mischievous, adds just a little louder, “Because Liam would be frankly _unbearable_ otherwise.”

“Hey, fuck you,” Liam’s answer comes floating in from the living room; both Theo and Corey snort with laughter.

Corey studies Theo for a few seconds longer, Theo standing still under the scrutiny, and then he smiles one last time and turns to leave. Theo closes his eyes and sags back against the counter, and then thirty seconds later he sighs and cracks one eye open to look at Stiles.

“So we’re doing kitchen confessionals, huh?” Stiles asks.

Theo just squints at him, “Why does everything you say sound dirty?”

“Hey,” Stiles tells him imperiously, pointing at him, “We both know you should be _thanking me_ for that little gift I left you, don’t act like you don’t appreciate my insight.”

But Theo just hides his amusement, asks Stiles seriously, “You spend a lot of time thinking about my sex life?”

Stiles makes a face, “Only when I have to spend months and months watching the world’s most awkward mating dance. Seriously, you two were _pathetic_.”

Theo just laughs, shakes his head, comments, “This touching reunion of ours is not very touching.”

Stiles snorts, dismisses Theo’s statement with a wave of his hand, “Maybe you need someone to keep that ego of yours from getting too big. Might prevent you from single-handedly taking on two dozen hunters again like a moron.”

Some of the humor drains out of the situation and Theo sobers, some, meets Stiles’ eyes seriously, “Maybe it will.”

Stiles looks at him for a moment and then mutters _Jesus_ ; he steps forward until he can grab Theo’s shoulder and yank him in for a brief, but tight, hug. Then he steps back and punches Theo in the shoulder.

“You realize you have responsibilities now, you know that? As my temporary replacement as McCall pack chief strategic genius, you can’t keep pulling this shit,” He says.

Theo makes a face, unsure which part of Stiles’ statement he wants to challenge first, settles on repeating skeptically, “Your _replacement_?”

“ _Yes_ , my _replacement_ ,” Stiles repeats, “That map of yours was totally a play on my brilliant whiteboarding skills.”

“You’re delusional,” Theo assures him, but his wide, amused smile is probably ruining the effect somewhat.

“You’re in denial,” Stiles quips back, “Now, c’mon, I wasn’t kidding about the hiding in here with the touching reunions, let’s go.”

He grabs one of Theo’s arms uses it to drag him forward far enough that Stiles can get behind him, push him forward. Theo deliberately locks his knees and stands still, just to prove he can, just to make the point, but when Stiles huffs and rolls his eyes—Theo can’t see his face, but he knows he did—Theo deliberately starts to move, lets Stiles finish pushing him out of the kitchen and back into the living room.

It already looks significantly better; most of the unsalvageable items have already been cleared away, while the ones that we’re in okay shape or harder to destroy have been rearranged back on Theo’s bookshelves. Alec, Nolan, Mason, Corey, and Liam seem to be in some involved argument about optimal placement; Liam is saying something about _feng shui_ like he knows anything about it, Mason making a disbelieving face next to him. When he sees Theo exiting the kitchen he breaks off, grins widely at him; Theo returns it, ignores Stiles behind him sing-songing, _pa-thet-ic_.

Stiles lets him go once they get far enough away from the kitchen that he’s apparently confident Theo isn’t going to run back into it, makes a beeline for Derek, who’s emerging from the cleaning supplies closet with a wet mop. He makes zero effort to actually help Derek as Derek gets the cleaning pad attached to the base, just starts pestering him until Derek pauses to yank him into a hard kiss and then push him away again, Stiles grinning like he just won something. But he does leave Derek to clean up the last of the broken glass, the mop meant to pick up any slivers, and goes to join Scott on the floor, who has the pack of wire coyotes in front of him and is carefully working their limbs and figures back into place.

Theo watches as Stiles picks one up and starts working on it, then glances up when Malia appears on silent feet next to him. She’s holding his collection of markers in her hands—they’d been strewn across the floor when one of the hunters tossed the mug they’d been held in off the shelf—obviously looking for a place to put them. He’s about to suggest just throwing them on his kitchen counter until he figures out what to do with them—he arguably doesn't need them anymore, what with Monroe dead—but Malia just switches them to one hand so that she can pull him into a somewhat awkward, just a shade too-aggressive hug.

He blinks, a little taken aback, but reaches out to wrap a reciprocal arm around her waist. Malia drops her arm but doesn’t move away, just frowns at him. Theo stays still and waits.

“Don’t do that again,” She finally tells him simply.

 _Good old Malia_ , Theo thinks, fighting back a grin, _always cutting straight to the heart of the matter_. This time he reaches for her, pulls her into a proper hug, though her hand with all the markers in it gets caught between their chests, their caps digging uncomfortably into his sternum. He lets her go soon enough and pulls back to smile at her.

Malia nods sharply, apparently satisfied, and heads towards the kitchen; she’d apparently had the same idea about where to put the markers as he did. He realizes Scott is watching him and quirks a smile at him, Scott returning it and dropping his eyes back down to the figurine in his hands.

That just leaves one pack member.

Theo slides into the seat next to Lydia at the table, who has a pile of glass pieces in front of her, multi-colored and variably-shaped; the remains of the strange, twisting figure that Scott had seen at some craft market on one of their hunting trips and picked up for Theo, and that Theo had placed on his table, finding that he’d liked messing with it while working with the map. She’s carefully fitting it pack together, a tube of superglue at her elbow. When Theo joins her at the table she raises one perfectly-shaped eyebrow but doesn’t look away from her work.

“What, is it my turn?” She asks dryly, and Theo could choose to take her tone personally, he guesses, but he knows better.

Instead he just laughs quietly under his breath, answers, “Guess so.”

She snorts and doesn’t reply, just picks up the tube of glue and squeezes a small amount onto one of the glass pieces, matches it to one of its fellows. Theo waits, content to watch her work in silence; he’s got the sound of pack surrounding him, the scent of it filling his lungs, and her hands are mesmerizingly graceful as she pieces the figure back together.

“That’s the second time you’ve made me watch you die,” She finally says.

Theo bites his lip, “I know. You and Liam could start a club.”

“No,” Lydia says, suddenly severe; she sets the pieces in her hands down gently, but firmly, turns to look at him, waits until he looks at her, a little surprised, “Liam had to watch you _dying_. I had to watch you _die_.”

 _Oh_ , Theo thinks, understanding: a banshee’s predictions; she’d seen the whole scenario play out, including how it could have ended. Lydia’s scent goes hot and she looks away, though her expression stays mostly serene, just a hint of a distressed wrinkle between her brows. Theo feels his chest clench, guilt saturating his veins. But Lydia gets control of herself again soon enough, takes a deep breath and lets it out, picks the pieces of the figure back up and gets back to work. They sit there in silence for a few more minutes, enough time that Lydia manages to piece the full figurine back together; nearly perfect, just a few chips missing here and there.

Theo looks at it when she sets it down gingerly, then up at her. She meets his eyes and studies him thoughtfully, then says, “You ready to stop being an idiot and admit you’re a vital part of this pack?”

Theo can’t help it; he drops his gaze away from her penetrating stare. But he doesn’t look at the table or the floor; he looks out at the pack. Scott and Stiles working on the figurines; Malia taking the mop from Derek to go clean up a different section of floor; Corey and Mason alphabetizing his books for some reason; Nolan and Alec sitting pressed against each other, Nolan looking up at him and then darting in to give him a quick kiss, Alec coloring happily.

And Liam, who notices Theo’s attention and smiles at him, his whole face lighting up with it. He bites his lips to try and control his smile but it doesn’t work, just crinkles his eyes further; Theo smiles helplessly back, his pulse spiking and his whole body prickling with warmth. Then Liam looks away, back to his conversation with Alec and Nolan, and Theo watches him for a moment, then turns back to Lydia, who’s studying him patiently.

“Yeah,” He tells her, that fire in his ribs burning strong, “Yeah, I am.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Edited to say: I have tumblr now! If you liked, consider a [reblog](https://eneiryu.tumblr.com/post/182479692630/i-know-all-sorts-of-things-i-dont-believe).


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